Birth: before 1841?
Death: late 1870s or early 1880s?
Nationality: American
Family: Allen
Glassworking relatives:
- Nora E. Allen (wife)
- William H. Allen (son)
Active: [at least 1860s-1870s, possibly early 1880s]
Brief biography
Very little is know about William M. Allen. He married Nora Swayne on November 16, 1861, in Hamilton County, Ohio. They had one son, William H. Allen, born in 1862. Allen ran the Western Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the early 1860s. By the end of the decade his wife was performing as Madam Nora, and the two toured with Miss Ann E. Leak, a woman who was born without arms. Leak and Nora Allen demonstrated at museums and in towns in the eastern half of the United States. Allen likely died before the late 1870s or early 1880s, when his wife remarried. It is unclear but possible that he demonstrated glassmaking.
