James A. Allen

    J. A. Allen, chief of police of the city of Chattanooga, was born January 16, 1833, at Columbus, Ky., but was reared to manhood in East Faliciana Parish, La. At the commencement of the late war he was an overseer of a plantation in that State, but this he resigned to enlist in the Sixteenth Louisiana Regulars (Company A), and in 1862 was ordered to Chattanooga on detached duty. He remained at this point until the evacuation of the city by the Confederates, then went to Macon, Ga., and in 1865, at the close of the war, returned to Chattanooga, which has since been his home. Mr. Allen is a carpenter by trade, and this occupation he followed until appointed on the police force in 1876. Prior to his election as chief of police in April, 1883, he officiated for one year as county jailer. In 1863 be was united in marriage with Mrs. Travers, and to their union six children have been born, only one now living. He and family are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. He is a son of Louis and Lucy (Feltz) Allen, who were natives of South Carolina and Tennessee, respectively, the former dying in Louisiana in 1860, preceded by his wife in Arkansas in 1840.

Goodspeed's History of Tennessee 1887

1880 US Census, 2nd Ward, Chattanooga, Hamilton Co., Tennessee; Page 143B