Overall, it seems that Allen and his first wife—identified by Sams as Sara (Jemima) Thomason—
had Gideon (born about 1807), William Young (born about 1810), Martha (born about
1815), Jesse (born about 1817), David Richmond (born about 1817), John W. (born about
1824), Christie Ann (born about 1822), Early (born about 1824), and Eliza (born about
1829). Christie Ann was apparently the child Sams called Kittie Ann, and the gap in births
between William Young and Martha provides a space into which the daughter called Linda
might have belonged. If there were children by this marriage after Eliza, their names have
not been discovered (Sams 1967; United States 1850). As previously noted, William married
Margaret Ritch in 1849. She already had a son Samuel Ritch when they married. William
and Margaret Ritch Allen had one child, Nancy F. Allen (1852–1937). (See Figures 3 and 4).
If the age given for William in the 1860 census was correct, William would have been over
90 when Nancy was born (United States 1860). While this is suspect, documents reveal that
she was regarded as his biological daughter, and her paternity seems never to have been
questioned within the family. Interestingly, Nancy’s youngest child died in Walton County
in 1970, three years after Sams published her work and about 200 years after William
Allen’s birth, and may have been the source of the account Sams provided (Sams 1967;
Findagrave 2013).
