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Solved! Mystery World War I Soldier Identified

In 2016, I inherited some of my grandmother's personal papers. This included some postcards from the early 20th century to her paternal grandparents, Frank and Mary Ellen (Ingersoll) Bryant of Los Angeles.  They were originally from Bloomington, Illinois.  The earliest postcard in the collection was from a soldier, Warren Allen, sent from Paris, France in about 1918.  When I originally shared this on my blog, I did not know how Mr. Allen was related to the family. There was also a 1930 postcard from Alice Allen of South Bend, Indiana addressed to "Dear Cousins":

24 November 1930 Postcard from Alice Allen to Mrs. R. F. Bryant from family collection.

It turns out that Mary Ellen had a first cousin, Alice Louella Ingersoll, who married William E. Allen in Bloomington on 24 September 1890.  They had at least three sons, Howard, Warren, and Herbert, born in the 1890s.  Twenty-four year-old Warren William Allen (1893-1970), was working as a bookkeeper and residing in Chicago when he registered for the draft on 5 June 1917.  A year and a day later Private Warren W. Allen set sail from Newport News, Virginia on the Martha Washington as part of Supply Company Number 313, Quartermaster Corps, National Army.*

Warren survived the Great War.  He married Edith Eilers in Chicago on 27 December 1919.  By the 1920 U.S. Census, they had moved to St. Louis, Missouri. Warren worked as an accountant for a brick manufacturing.  He remained in the St. Louis area for the rest of his years.  He passed away in 1970 at age 76.

* Ancestry.com. U.S., Army Transport Service Arriving and Departing Passenger Lists, 1910-1939 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016. Original source: The National Archives at College Park; College Park, Maryland; Record Group Title: Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, 1774-1985; Record Group Number: 92; Roll or Box Number: 490, Martha Washington Passenger List, 6 June 1918, Warren W. Allen.



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Location: South Bend, IN, USA

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