I represent Lt. Col. William Allen, Commander of the Provincial Corps of Pennsylvania Loyalists. I was the son of Chief Justice William Allen, who served from 1750 to 1774. I had two brothers: John, who had always been a Loyalist; and Andrew, who was a member of the Continental Congress before deciding to commit to the British cause. I had actually accepted a commission as a lieutenant colonel in the rebel American army, fighting at Quebec in 1776, but I resigned my commission shortly after the passage of the Declaration of Independence. I was the driving force behind raising the Pennsylvania Loyalists and I recruited all the officers. The corps arrived in Pensacola at the very end of 1778 and remained until the surrender of Pensacola to the Spanish on May 10, 1781. The Pennsylvania Loyalists were sent with the rest of the prisoners of war to New York. My name is found on the manifest of a transport to Nova Scotia, where many loyalists took refuge. I and my brothers were tried for treason in Pennsylvania after the war and we lost everything. I was known for my “wit, for good humor, and for affable and gentlemanly manners”
Sources: 24, 30, 51, 56, 57