Allen, Zachariah (1795-1882)
Role: Class of 1813, Trustee of BrownDates: 1826-1882
Portrait Location: Faculty Club 105
Artist: Greene, Cornelia Elizabeth (1872-1901)
Portrait Date:
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 35 1/4
Framed Dimensions: 50
Brown Portrait Number: 78
Brown Historical Property Number: 1286
Zachariah Allen was born in Providence in 1795, the son of Zachariah and Anne Crawford Allen. His mother was a descendent of Gabriel Bernon, a French Huguenot merchant and a key figure in the establishment of the Episcopal Church in Rhode Island. Like this august ancestor, Allen is an influential figure in Rhode Island history. Allen prepared for college at Phillips Exeter Academy, then attended Brown University, from which he graduated in 1813. He attended Brown medical school but decided during the course of his studies there to pursue a career in law instead. James Burrill, who graduated from Brown in 1788, took Allen into his law office as a student. After his 1815 admission to the bar, he practiced law for seven years. During this time, however, the young lawyer became interested in the growing field of textile manufacturing, and by 1822, he left the legal profession and entered the business of woolen manufacturing, building Allendale Mill in North Providence, Rhode Island. He was the first manufacturer in the state to receive a charter to build reservoirs, and made pioneering use of this type of water-power in manufacturing. In 1825, Allen traveled to Europe to examine practices in the textile mills there. He published several books on mechanics and science early in his manufacturing career, including one detailing what he had learned in his travels; he also invented a number of machines used in mills as well as an important safety-device, an automatic shut-off valve for steam engines. He did not confine his mechanical talents to items useful in manufacturing, but also invented a furnace for home heating.
Allen is remembered not only as one of nineteenth-century Rhode Island's many wealthy manufacturers, but also as a pioneer in corporate insurance. Allen believed it was a manufacturer's responsibility to create as safe a working environment as possible, and he resented the fact that the only insurance policies that were available to him based premium increases on liabilities from all companies, regardless of their safety record. During the 1830s, he formed a group of like-minded manufacturers and they founded their own mutual insurance association, which insured only factories that took steps to eliminate safety hazards and lower risk. Allen's Manufacturer's Mutual Fire Insurance Company expanded and his idea took hold elsewhere. Today, FM Global, the international factory insurance company, traces its origins to Allen's association of regional manufacturers.
In addition to founding what would later become a global company, Allen also had local effects on Rhode Island. He is remembered for his contribution to the beauty of the state through his careful stewardship of a 40-acre plot of land in what is now Lincoln Woods. For 67 years, Allen grew trees on this once-depleted land. His diary of the experiment was hailed by the botanist Charles S. Sargent as "the first attempt at anything like silviculture ever made in New England, and probably in the United States." Allen's mill still manufactures cotton goods, the insurance association that he founded has offices all over the world, and some of the trees he planted are no doubt delighting hikers in Lincoln Woods Park.
This portrait of Allen was painted by Cornelia Elizabeth Green, a relative of Allen's wife (and also the niece of Samuel Greene Arnold, who is depicted in Brown's portrait collection). Cornelia Elizabeth Green was born in Providence in 1872. She attended Wellesley College, graduating in 1892, and then continued her studies at the Rhode Island School of Design and at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She painted this portrait from photographs and from memory. It was completed in 1900. Green died in 1901 in Philadelphia, the same year that Brown received the portrait from Allen's daughter, Candace Allen.