The grandfather in the paternal line was Ira Allen, of whom one of the local papers wrote: "He was one of the builders of Hyrum, and his sons and daughters and their children and children's children have always been and still are among the foremost in ecclesiastical and civil activities in this and other communities, a credit to their country and their church wherever their labors are required. Ira Allen was the son of Simeon Allen and Elizabeth Leavens and was born in Thompson, Windham county, Connecticut, April 27, 1814. He was of the seventh generation from his fourth great-grandfather, James Allen, who settled in Medfield, Massachusetts, in 1637. He lived at home with his parents until he was twenty-one years of age, working at farming and brickmaking. He was married to Calista Bass, daughter of Luther Bass of Ashford, Connecticut, November 23, 1834. He lived in Connecticut until the spring of 1837, when he and his family removed to Hillsdale county, Michigan. It was here he heard Mormonism and embraced it February 9, 1845. In June of the same year he moved with his family to Nauvoo, Hancock county, Illinois. He left Nauvoo, June 15, 1846, and went to Winter Quarters, arriving there November 5th of the same year. He lived there until May, 1848, when he moved to Harris Grove. By this time his family consisted of himself, his wife and five children. Through the persecution and driving of the Mormons he had become very poor. All they had to eat that winter was bread and one-quarter of a deer. Both he and his children were without shoes all that winter. In the spring he picked up two odd shoes that some one had thrown away, and with these to wear he walked fifty miles to St. Joseph, Missouri. Here he got work baling hemp. He worked twenty days, receiving twenty-one dollars after paying for his board. Knowing his family would be out of provisions, he went back home. When he arrived there he learned that the only food his family had had to eat for four days was roots that the two older boys, Andrew and Frank, had dug. While living at Harris Grove he made a wagon in which to cross the plains. Iron being scarce, he was unable to get any tires for the wheels. With this wagon, a yoke of oxen and a cow, he started for Utah, June 6, 1850, arriving in Salt Lake City, October 3d. This wagon carried seventeen hundred pounds across the plains, and when it arrived in Utah the fellies were half worn out. He had been in Salt Lake City but three weeks when he was called by President Brigham Young to go south and help build what is now known as Springville. On December 1, 1852, he married Keziah (Benson) Judy, daughter of Alva Benson and Cynthia Vail. In 1853 he was again called to go south to help build another settlement in Iron county. This town is now Cedar City. He here married Cynthia Benson, another daughter of Alva Benson, August 25, 1858. He remained in Cedar City until 1860, when he took part of his family and came to Cache Valley, where he and others founded the city of Hyrum. After plowing, sowing and harvesting a few acres of land he went back to Cedar City. The next spring he moved the rest of his family to Hyrum, where the majority of them still reside. His first wife died here in 1863. He was the father of twenty-five children, of whom twelve are still living. He now has one hundred and twenty-four grandchildren, one hundred and forty-four great-grandchildren and twelve great-great-grandchildren. He was a stanch Latter-day Saint, always setting a good example before his children. He and his posterity have done a great work in the Temple for some eight hundred of his dead relatives. He died in full faith of the gospel on December 21, 1900, being in his eighty-seventh year."

BIOGRAPHY: Utah Since State: Historical and Biographical. Volume IV.