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”!
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 frail, 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
(originally written 2003, edited & updated 2026)