My Family History Annals, by Alf Allen.
In 1999 my father, Alfred Douglas Allen, completed his “Family History Annals”, compiled over a number of years from talking to family members and his own recollections. He laboriously typed it out on his “1990s modern” Canon Star-Writer word-processor (yes, the one that had eight or so lines on an LCD screen and the most complex formatting instructions I’ve ever seen; but it did the job for him…).
He produced a total of five copies, each individually printed on that Canon, gave me the first copy, his two brothers and step-sister the next three and kept the fifth for himself. Luckily enough, I had copied the text to floppy disks and had the original eleven chapters saved on my computer, in my mind “ready to print more copies when he needed them”. This has made the transfer to an electronically-stored and distributed medium (i.e. this website) much easier…
As I outline in the last chapter that looks at 1978 onwards (my addition), he never needed more copies (and knowing him, never would have wanted any further distribution); he was taken ill with Oesophageal Cancer in February 2001 and died on 24th March in Southampton General Hospital.
He dedicated his Annals:
- To Mike: This book is for you – I hope it fills in a few gaps.
- To Fred & Derek: Just a few memories… I hope you enjoy the book, I’ve not used too many big words!!!
- In loving memory of our mum… “She was a beauty”!
He spent many years compiling information about his family. He found out some by research at the Public Records Office as well as quite a lot from talking to his mother and other family members. Those sources primarily led him to produce this family history focused on his maternal line. Of course, most of these “Family History Annals” are a compilation of his memories and his collection of diaries between 1921 and 1978. He kept everything…
In the additional Greenwich afterword I’ve copied and edited the six sheets he produced entitled “The Allens of Greenwich”, in which he outlined his ancestor search for his paternal line.
It must have been difficult as his father, John Alfred Allen [b. 22nd November 1892], died aged 40 [30th January 1933], and HIS father (i.e. my dad’s grandfather), John Stephen Allen [b. 12th March 1862], the Publican of the “Sun” Public House, Greenwich, died aged only 33 [6th October 1895] but my dad managed to trace back five generations; I’ve included a partial family tree based on the Greenwich information and a few other of his sources.
As I’ve said, that “last” chapter 1978 – Swaythling, which gives some information about his life from 1978 until his death in 2001, is my sole addition (apart from comments in the text, which I’ve marked as “Mike says” or similar). I realise it is a poor attempt to summarise those last twenty-three years, and as I read it again I make changes. Again.
Early website creation using Pop-Up Books (before the advent of WordPress).
In order to publish this, I’ve taken some liberties with his punctuation, with the flow of sentences, and amended and updated my dad’s spelling, but nothing you’d notice I hope (or rather, nothing he’d have noticed). No meanings have been changed and little syntax has strayed from the original.
In that vein, and begging his pardon for spreading this further than he might have imagined, this site is for my dad – a man sometimes as frail as these pages tell in detail, always great, and who everybody said thought the world of me and didn’t properly tell me; nor probably me him.
Thanks, dad. I love you and miss you.
Mike (written 2003, edited & updated 2026)