She was born on January 10, 1878 on her family's plantation in Shorterville, Alabama, along the Chattahoochee River, and died on February 2, 1937 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was married on November 10, 1896 to Charles Pollard Allen, also originally from Alabama (buried next to her). She was the child of agricultural Southerners with a heritage leading back before the Civil War and the American Revolution to immigrants from England. She lived through the conquest of the West, the advent of industrialization, the Spanish-American War, World War I, and the Great Depression and died in the industrial north at 59. She was born just 13 days after her husband, and died 7 months before him. They are buried together in West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala-Cynwyd, PA, just outside of Philadelphia (gravesites 1038 for those wishing to visit).
Minnie had seven children, including our grandfather, William Joseph Allen, but only five survived into adulthood. Her first born, Vallie Chitty Allen, died at 2 months and 15 days, and her fourth, Irwin, died at one year, five months and 16 days. Even if this was not so uncommon in the era she lived in, the loss of a child at any age surely affected the lives of everyone in her family.
By 1930, Minnie and Charles lived in Haverford, Delaware and Petersburg, Virginia when he spent 12 years working with DuPont Company in chemical and explosives , as well as with the Panama Canal Company. The chemical explosives industry that the DuPont's were extensively involved in was tied to the mining industry both in the US and world wide. Explosives and mining seem to go hand in hand, and as the digging and expansion of the Panama Canal involved extensive earth moving, it was a natural tie for the Allen's to be involved in.
It was likely while the family was in Virginia that Minnie's son, William Joseph Allen, my wife's grandfather, met and married his wife, Rosa Kimbrough Vaughan.
Minnie was the fifth child of Benjamin Irwin Chitty and Sarah Emmaline Hall who grew up in south east Alabama along the Chattahoochie river. Benjamin had been a Lieutenant in the 6th Alabama Infantry, CSA, and fought mainly in the Western theater. Sarah, while born in Georgia, is identified with "Hall's Landing," an agricultural property along the river, which likely indicates agriculture--meaning cotton. How and why the family got up to Sheffield in north west Alabama by the time Minnie was born is unknown at this time.
Interestingly, Minnie's husband Charles was descended from William Wirt Allen, a Brigadier General in the Confederate Army, as well as brother-in-law of the Governor of Alabama during the Civil War. His monument is located in a cemetery in Florence, Alabama, just across the river from her birthplace.
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