John Allan was born in Kirkintilloch, Dumbartonshire, Scotland, on 21 September 1823. His parents were Robert Allan and Elizabeth Stirling. His father was the proprietor and manager of a shop which employed weavers who wove woolen cloths on looms and other fabrics by hand. John had an older sister, two older brothers and a younger sister and brother. One of his older brothers died as an infant.
John's opportunities for schooling were not the best. He said that he had no great love for the teachers of that day because their chief means of "persuasion" was the cat-o-nine tails or the rod. He succeeded, however, in mastering the rudiments of reading, arithmetic and learned to write a fairly good hand. At an early age, he quit school and entered his father's shop to learn the weaver's trade. This was not to his liking so he soon abandoned it and became an apprentice in a print shop which had been established in town. He became proficient at block printing.
During his boyhood and early manhood, he became friends with Robert Patrick, a game keeper on a large estate in the neighborhood. Through this friendship, John was permitted to carry a gun and to participate in his favorite pastimes of fishing and hunting. Being a great lover of nature--animals and birds in particular--he spent part of his leisure time in stuffing birds and became quite an expert taxidermist.
He met Agnes McAuslan, who worked at his father's shop. They courted and were married 27 August 1840. Soon after their marriage, they moved to a place called Barrhead, not far from the large city of Paisley in Scotland. It was here that the Gospel found them. Two uncles of Agnes, Alexander and Dougal Adamson, had been working in another part of the country where they had heard of and accepted "Mormonism." They were the first to bring the glad tidings of the Gospel to the neighborhood where John and Agnes were then living. Among the first to receive the Gospel in that area was the Peter McAuslan Family, Agnes' father, mother and family. They were baptized in about 1850.
John's father, Robert Allan, who was an elder in the Presbyterian Church, had formed a deep prejudice again the Mormons. John, although converted at the time of his wife and her family, did not join the church until two years later on 10 April 1852. His family had always read the Bible as he was growing up, but he had never taken kindly to some of the doctrines of the Presbyterian Church such as predestination and infant damnation.
Agnes' parents and family immigrated to Utah in 1853 and John and Agnes followed two years later. They arrived in Salt Lake City in October 1855. They spent their first winter in the valley in the 19th Ward of Salt Lake City. The following spring they moved about six miles south to Big Cottonwood and bought a piece of land on the banks of Little Cottonwood Creek where they lived for a number of years.
In about 1856, John was married to Janet McAuslan, Agnes' younger sister. In 1861, the family moved to land on the west bank of the Weber River a little north of Coalville, Summit County. Not long after this move, Janet left the family and her two young sons, John and Peter, and eventually moved with her parents to California. Agnes, who had never had children of her own, became the mother of young John and Peter.
In 1865, John was married to Jane Gray. Two years later, Jane died immediately after giving birth to her son, Robert Gray Allan. This baby was left to the care of Agnes as well. In the fall of 1869, John married Jane Fleming Ferguson Shaw, who, with her widowed mother and family, had emigrated from Scotland and settled in Coalville in the summer of 1868.
In 1871, John Allan and his family left Coalville and settled in Richfield, Sevier County. He and his family became members of the United Order of Richfield. While living in Richfield, John and his fourth wife, Jane, became the parents of three daughters, Agnes, Elizabeth and our Grandmother, Annie Jane, who was born in 1875.
In the fall of 1877, John was sent on a short mission to Scotland. During the summer of 1878, John was called by Apostle Erastus Snow to go to the San Luis Valley in Colorado, to form a settlement there. He sold his property in Richfield and with his two wives, Agnes and Jane, his three sons and three daughters, and his oldest son, John's wife, Jennie Hellstrom, moved to Colorado. They settled on the Conejos River near the small Mexican town of Los Ceretos.
In 1881, John was released from his mission in the San Luis Valley by Apostle Erastus Snow. He decided to try his fortune on the San Juan River in Utah. He and his family obtained land about eighteen miles above the town of Bluff on the San Juan River. All the family were finally located at the old Montezuma Fort by early August 1881, which was when John and Jane's next daughter, Florence, was born. A son was born to John and Jane--John Alexander--in 1882.
In 1890, nine-year old Florence and seven-year old John A. died of diphtheria. Our Grandmother Annie Jane was very sick with diphtheria at that same time, but survived, grew to womanhood, married Edward Fleming Thompson and was the mother of nine children, Clyde Fleming Thompson being the oldest.
John Allan died at Bluff at the age of 84 years on 27 April 1908.
John Allan was about five feet six inches in height and weighed about 125 pounds. His hair and beard were black. In his work he was always careful, neat and orderly. He had a quick and impulsive temperament and sometimes did or said things that he was sorry for afterward. He had a deep reverence for God and never used profane language. He was also submissive to the authority of the Priesthood. He was a humble and God-fearing man devoted to the Church and to his family.
