John Delbert Allen (1851-1947) Bertha Palmer wrote in her 1939 book Beauty Spots in North Dakota, “Mr. Allen has lived through the most remarkable stage in the history of North Dakota and surely the most romantic. He knew the pioneers, the Indians and the buffalo and he saw them all pass like some great pageant, and today the pageant still lives as he has seen it, in the many paintings he has left ...” Arriving originally in Mandan in 1881, Allen personally knew some of the most famous names in the region. The eldest of three children, Allen was born on April 20, 1851 in Italy Hill, Steuben County, New York to M.P. Allen, a furniture dealer and cabinet maker, and his wife Nancy K. (Cook). In 1853, the Allen family moved to Ohio and then on to Paw Paw, Michigan, where M.P set up his own furniture business. When Allen was seven years old, tragedy struck the family with the passing of his mother Nancy. Thin and lean, he bought a set of Indian clubs in his youth to build up his muscles.  He claimed excercising with the clubs paired and frequent bicycling was responsible for his longevity.  In 1873, when he was 21, after entering into a business partnership with his father, Allen began experimenting with taxidermy on the side until it overshadowed his woodworking duties.  A year later, Allen amicably ended his partnership with his father and opened a taxidermy shop in Paw Paw. Allen saw his business grow steadily until 1877, when he relocated to Denver, Colorado, established another taxidermy business.  However his reoccuring exposure to the heavy metal arsenic associated with his early taxidermy techniques, he temporarily left his practice to recover.  Due in large part to his earlier education in shorthand, he gained employment as an aide to Governor Pitkin of Colorado and journalist M.M. Pomeroy.  In 1880, he moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, and took employment as a stenographer for H.E. Sargent, the general manager of the Northern Pacific Railway, where he stayed until the spring of 1881. On May 11, Allen arrived in Mandan to work as a timekeeper and telegrapher in the Northern Pacific Railroad shops but resigned later that summer. After returning from a brief visit east, established his taxidermy business in 1882.   Working from his home at 302 5th Ave NW,  Allen did work for Theodore Roosevelt as well as members of European nobility.  His workshop contained Indian relics, original paintings, and a variety of mounted thousands of specimens of animals, birds, and fish found in the area.  Of additional note, the home contained salvaged pieces from Fort Abraham Lincoln which were obtained after the US Army abandoned the fort in 1894. Upon his establishment in Mandan, Allen was able to focus more time and energy on painting. Working first with pastels, he soon switched to oil-based paints. His work often dealt with the early days of the state as a subject and frequently described landscapes, buffalo, and American Indian life using warm, earth-toned colors.  Unfortunately due to this relatively amatuer status at the time of his death, his works have been spread dispursed over a wide number of collectors and the status of most of his paintings is unknown. Although painting skills were self taught and but a hobby, he has captured the spirit of early North Dakota scenes as have few trained artists. Several of his canvases hang in the State Historical Society of North Dakota.  His realistic distribution of light and shadow, mass, division of space, and perspective presented the views as Allen saw them in his time, ascribing a historical, as well as artistic, value to his work. It was only just months before his death that he received any national recognition.  In March of 1947, Allen was honored by the American Artists Professional League for "meritorius performance in the field of art," and was the first North Dakotan so honored. In addition to painting, Allen was an amateur photographer, poet, and violinist and was among the first men to volunteer to be unoffical Boy Scout leaders in Mandan.  He taught the boys how to shoot with bow and arrow, and to swing the Indian clubs.  He regaled them with stories related by his Indian friends, drawn from his own experiences with native Americans during his early days in Mandan.  Allen had an ever hungry curiosity, an urge to try his hand at something new, he always came back to his first love, taxidermy. His shop contained a huge disarray of Indian artifacts and mounts of birds anials, reptiles, and fish.  A sign tacked above the door of his shop read "Order is Heaven's first law, " and beneath it, Allen had scrawled, "You are not in heaven."   On February 3, 1890, Allen married Nellie A. Wilson, a native of the state of New York.  The union produced one daughter, Ila born on May 21, 1891. J. D. Allen lived in Mandan for 65 years.  He died in his sleep on April 28, 1947, and at the time of his death, he was the oldest active taxidermist in the country.   He and his wife Nellie are buried in Union Cemetery in Mandan. This biography was based on research performed by Ben Nemenoff for the North Dakota Council of the Arts and articles from The Mandan Pioneer newspaper.  We appreciate the contricutions of both organizations toward this Legacy Program biography.