John James Allen

John James Allen (September 25, 1797 – September 18, 1871) was a Virginia slave owner, lawyer, judge and politician. He served in the Virginia Senate, the 23rd United States Congress, and for 25 years as judge and President of the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. He supported Virginia's secession during the American Civil War, and all his surviving sons joined the Confederate States Army, the two youngest dying in the conflict. Early and family life Allen was born at Woodstock, Shenandoah County, Virginia to lawyer James Allen (1762-1844) and his wife, the former Jane Steele (1758-1826), daughter of Rev. John Steele (1715-1779; the "Fighting Parson" of Carlisle, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania). His father would represent Shenandoah county in the Virginia House of Delegates as well as become the local circuit court judge. John J. Allen studied at Washington College in Lexington, Virginia and at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, then read law with his father. He married Mary Elizabeth Payne Jackson (daughter of John George and Mary Payne Jackson) on November 11, 1824. Their children included Mary J. Allen Watts (1825-1855), Jane S. Arthur (1831- ), John J. Allen Jr. (1831-1898), Eveline S. Allen Wood (1833-1909), Robert Edwin Allen (1836-1883), Henry Clay Allen (1838-1889), James Madison Allen (1840-1959), George Jackson Allen (1843-1862), and Baldwin Allen (1845-1862). Career Allen was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1818, and opened his first office at Campbell Courthouse, Virginia in 1819. He soon moved to Clarksburg, the seat of Harrison County where he practiced law in the surrounding counties for seventeen years, after 1830 (until his election as judge) in partnership with Gideon D. Camden, who also later became a circuit judge.