ALLEN BENNETT LINCOLN.

     Allen Bennett Lincoln, of New Haven, who is district manager of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was born at Willimantic, Connecticut, August 2, 1858, a son of Allen and Sallinda (Bennett) Lincoln, both of whom are deceased. The father was born at North Windham, Connecticut, and was a son of Captain Dan Lincoln, a prominent citizen of Windham county, who for years was a captain of the state militia. He was born in Windham county and was one of the descendants of Samuel Lincoln, who came from England and founded the family in the new world. John Lincoln, the great-great-grandfather of Allen B. Lincoln, also a resident of North Windham, was a Revolutionary war soldier. To another branch of the family belonged Albert Lincoln, a West Point graduate, who also served his country with honor and distinction in the Indian wars of the west and died as the result of fever contracted at St. Louis, Missouri.

     Allen Lincoln became a successful wholesale and retail grocer and flour merchant, making for himself a most creditable position in business circles. He was active in promoting the growth of Willimantic in the years following the Civil war. He also served for seventeen years as town clerk of Windham, where he resided until his death, which occurred February 2, 1882, when he had reached the age of sixty-four years. His wife was a daughter of Deacon Origen Bennett, of Chaplin, Connecticut, who was a direct descendent of Nathaniel Bennett, one of the original settlers of Stonington, Connecticut. Deacon Bennett was a highly honored and respected citizen of Chaplin and a Baptist deacon, who came of the old Puritan stock of New England. Mrs. Sallinda Lincoln passed away December 26, 1900, at Willimantic, when in the eighty-third year of her age. She was the mother of four children, a son and three daughters. The first of the family was Martha Sallinda, who was married May 17, 1866, at the old New Haven House, to John M. Alpaugh, who for many years was a leading dry goods merchant of Willimantic and a warden of the borough of Willimantic. In 1887 they removed to Providence, Rhode Island, where he was successfully engaged in the wholesale wall paper and curtain business until his death in 1916. His wife had preceded him to the great beyond, dying in November, 1914, when sixty-seven years of age. Another daughter, Janette, became the wife of Frank F. Webb, of Willimantic, a leading business man and banker, who there passed away in 1913, while his widow still resides in that city. Her twin sister, Mrs. Lila H. Brown, was formerly a resident of Providence, Rhode Island, but now also lives in Willimantic.

     Allen B. Lincoln was educated in the district and high schools of Willimantic and at Williston Seminary, Easthampton, Massachusetts, from which he was graduated with the class of 1877. He next entered Yale College and won the Bachelor of Arts degree upon graduation in 1881. He then entered the newspaper field in connection with the Providence Evening Press and later with the Providence Journal, but on account of ill health he was obliged to return to Willimantic and in August, 1885, became temporary chief clerk with the state board of education under Secretary Charles D. Hine. In the state campaign of 1886 Mr. Lincoln established and published “The Connecticut Home,” a newspaper at Willimantic representing the state and national prohibition party. He entered into that work with characteristic energy and enthusiasm. Later he removed the offices to Hartford and in 1890 he merged the paper with the  Worcester Times, changing the name to “The New England Home,” which became the recognized organ of the national prohibition party in the eastern states, having a wide circulation. Mr. Lincoln continued as editor of the paper and was also for several years state chairman of the prohibition party of Connecticut. In 1894 he sold this paper to the Chicago Lever and immediately thereafter turned his attention to the life insurance business.

     It was in 1896 that Mr. Lincoln became connected with the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which association has been maintained to the present. He became district manager for eastern Connecticut, with headquarters at Willimantic, and in May, 1909, because of his signal success in that work, was appointed manager of the New Haven district agency. While now actively engaged in the insurance business, he has also continued his good work with the prohibition party and has made contribution of his talent, his finances and his moral and Christian support to the work. He has also promoted the cause through his writings, doing much toward developing public sentiment for national prohibition. He advocates the use of the words “alcoholic drink traffic” as expressing exactly the institution which is a public menace everywhere and which has no proper standing under the American constitutional guarantee of “the general welfare.”

     On the 18th of December, 1883, Mr. Lincoln was married at Willimantic to Miss Caroline Laura Buck, a daughter of the late Hon. Edwin A. Buck, state treasurer and state bank commissioner. Mrs. Edwin A. Buck was born Delia Ashley, a daughter of George Lincoln, of Ashford, a representative of an old and prominent family of that place that has been found in America for seven generations. Mr. and Mrs. Allen B. Lincoln have become the parents of four daughters: Marion Buck, who was graduated from Smith College in 1910 and is now teacher of English in the High School of Commerce at Springfield, Massachusetts; Elsie Bennett, who has recently finished her course in the School of Practical Arts of Columbia University and who was graduated from Wheaton College in 1913; Barbara Grace, a senior in Smith College; and Julia Armour, who is at Connecticut College in New London, class of 1921.

     In religious faith Allen B. Lincoln is a Congregationalist. He holds membership in the Graduates’ Club of New Haven and with the Sons of the American Revolution. He is an active member of the Chamber of Commerce, working especially for better sanitation and the improvement of the city’s health. For the past two years he has been chairman of New Haven’s “clean-up week” committee and his energetic work in this connection has won the special commendation of the New York board of fire underwriters as helping to develop one of the most efficient plans of municipal safety and health improvement. He is likewise a member of the state executive committee of the Civil Service Reform Association of Connecticut. He takes a very active interest in civic matters and has done everything in his power to further the task of making ideal American citizens out of the alien races coming to these shores. He has worked particularly among the Italians through the Knights of King Arthur Clubs for Boys. He is the author of “The New Citizen’s Pledge,” a patriotic document which has found wide acceptance among civic workers as a means of teaching the immigrant his duties toward his adopted country and in fact the pledge is recognized as a clear, concise expression of the practical every-day meaning of American citizenship. In a word, he has himself been a close student of civic principles and problems and has in every way sought to place before the aliens the highest standards and to assist them in adopting such standards. He does not believe in treating them as aliens, people foreign to the interests and life of America, but finds in them the same aspirations for civil liberty and social betterment that characterize the native stock, and maintains that a sane interpretation of American principles is the best common ground for the development of a united progressive people in the United States.

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