Charles Allen (Massachusetts politician)
Charles Allen was a United States Representative from Massachusetts.
He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on August 9, 1797, the son Joseph Allen and grandnephew of Samuel Adams). Allen attended Leicester Academy and Yale College and studied law. He was admitted to the bar in 1818 and commenced practice in New Braintree. He returned to Worcester in 1824 and continued the practice of law. In 1827 he was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society.
Allen was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives ; he also served in the Massachusetts State Senate. In 1842, he was a member of the Maine-New Brunswick boundary commission created by the Webster–Ashburton Treaty that ended the Aroostook War. He was a judge of the Court of Common Pleas and a delegate to the 1848 Whig National Convention in Philadelphia. He was twice elected to Congress as a Free-Soil Party candidate, but did not seek renomination in 1852. In 1849 he edited the Boston Whig, later called the Republican.
After leaving Congress, he resumed the practice of law in Worcester. He was a member of the state's constitutional convention in 1853. He was Chief Justice of the Suffolk County Superior Court.
He was a delegate to the Peace Conference of 1861 held in Washington, D.C. to try to prevent the start of the Civil War.
Charles Allen died in Worcester on August 6, 1869. He was interred in the Rural Cemetery.
The home on which he began construction, the Charles Allen House, was completed by his descendants and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
