Youth, Early Life and Family
Allen was born in a log cabin in Winn Parish to Asa Levi Allen and the former Sophronia Perkins. He attended Winn Parish schools, the Springfield Normal School and Business College in Springfield, Missouri, and Trinity University, a private institution then in Waxahachie, Texas, south of Dallas in Ellis County. (Trinity is now in San Antonio.)
Allen taught school in Winn Parish in 1898 and later in Mineral Springs, Texas, and Pleasant Hill in Sabine Parish. In 1908, he was an assistant registrar at Trinity. Thereafter, he worked at times in farming, railroads, the mercantile business, and in oil drilling.
Allen married the former Florence Scott Love of Paris, the seat of Lamar County, Texas, on December 4, 1912. They had three children: Joyce Love (Mrs. Frederick J. Stare), Oscar Kelly Allen, Jr. (born 1915), and Asa Benton Allen (born 1925)
Read more about this topic: Oscar K. Allen
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or family:
“Foolish prater, What dost thou
So early at my window do?
Cruel bird, thou’st ta’en away
A dream out of my arms to-day;
A dream that ne’er must equall’d be
By all that waking eyes may see.
Thou this damage to repair
Nothing half so sweet and fair,
Nothing half so good, canst bring,
Tho’ men say thou bring’st the Spring.”
—Abraham Cowley (1618–1667)
“When man has neither the strength to subdue his underworld powers—which are really the ancient powers of his old, superseded self; nor the wit to placate them with sacrifice and the burnt holocaust; then they come back at him, and destroy him again. Hence every new conquest of life means a “harrowing of Hell.””
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one’s self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, everywhere conceded—a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment by inheritance, wealth, family and position.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)