Allen Allensworth (April 7, 1842 – September 14, 1914) was an American chaplain, colonel, city founder, and theologian. Born into slavery in Kentucky, he escaped during the American Civil War by joining the 44th Illinois Volunteers as a Union soldier. After being ordained as a Baptist minister by the Fifth Street Baptist Church, April 9, 1871, he worked as a teacher, led several churches, and was appointed as a chaplain in the United States Army. In 1886, he gained appointment as a military chaplain to a unit of Buffalo Soldiers in the West, becoming the first African American to reach the rank of lieutenant colonel in the United States Army. He served in the Army for 20 years, retiring in 1906.
Allensworth was a prolific public speaker, embarking on a speaking tour with the goal of inspiring Black youth. His lectures included Five Manly Virtues Exemplified, The Battle of Life and How to Fight It, and Character and How to Read It. While on tour in Pasadena, he met William Alexander Payne, a professor. In 1908, Allensworth, Payne, and a small committee founded Allensworth, California, the first community established, financed, and governed entirely by African Americans. It continues to be restored and maintained as the Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park.
Early life and education
Born into slavery in Louisville, Kentucky in 1842, Allensworth was the youngest of thirteen children of Phyllis (c. 1782 - 1878) and Levi Allensworth. Over the years, their family was scattered: his sister Lila escaped with her intended husband to Canada via the Underground Railroad; and the older boys William, George, Frank, Levi and Major were sold downriver to plantations in the Deep South, which continued to buy enslaved workers from the Upper South to develop the cotton industry. Mary Jane was his only sibling who grew up in Kentucky and married there; she purchased her freedom in 1849, gaining stability.
His mother was enslaved by A.P. and Bett Starbird. The mistress assigned Allen as a young slave to her son Thomas. When the Starbird boy started school, Allen began to learn from him, although it was illegal. After his father died when Allen was young, his mother chose to be sold as a cook to a neighbor, the attorney Nat Wolfe. When the Starbirds found Allen was learning to read, they separated him from their son and placed him with another family, the Talbots. Mrs. Talbot, a Quaker, was kind to Allen and continued to teach him to read and write; she also took him to a Sunday school for slave children. When Bett Starbird discovered this, she took Allen back. In 1854 she made arrangements with her husband's partner John Smith to send the boy downriver to a plantation owned by John's brother Pat, in Henderson, Kentucky, to put an end to his learning. On the steamboat, the boy was placed in the care of a slave steward rather than being chained with other slaves below deck, who were being transported for sale to downriver markets.
Hebe Smith, Allen's new enslaver, assigned him to be a houseboy; she prohibited him from continuing his studies and whipped him for trying to do so. Also working in the household was a white orphan boy Eddie; the two boys became friends and helped each other. Suffering on the farm from a cruel overseer, in 1855 at age 13, Allen planned to escape to Canada. He spent two weeks hiding at a neighboring farm before returning to the Smiths for punishment. Later he ran away again. The Smiths and Starbirds agreed to sell him on the auction block in Henderson.
Allensworth was sold again in Memphis, Tennessee and shipped to New Orleans. There he was bought by Fred Scruggs, who taught him to work as an exercise boy and jockey in Jefferson, Louisiana. Unlike others, his new enslaver was pleased to learn that the boy could read; he assigned him to race his best horse.
Civil War and freedom
In early 1861, the Civil War loomed, but horse racing continued. Scruggs took Allen and his horses upriver for the fall meet in Louisville. Allensworth hoped to see his mother Phyllis again, as he had learned that her last enslaver, a Rev. Bayliss, had freed her after she cared for his dying wife. He found that she had recently gone to New Orleans with a Union man to look for her sons. (She found Major in prison.) Waiting for her return, Allensworth was reunited with his sister Mary Jane, who had married and had a son. She had self-liberated by purchasing her freedom in 1849. When Phyllis Starbird returned to Louisville, Mary Jane and Allen were reunited.