Charles L. Allen, MD: The making of a surgeon

His duties were not finished, as shown by this letter to the surgeon general dated January 18, 1865: "I have just received from the War Department a refusal of my request to employ a civilian clerk to make the returns of the Medical Purveying Department at Hilton Head, S.C. while I was in charge of the same. The general will recollect that .... at no time did I have clerks enough to do the job.... Thus, I had no means of making my returns."

Allen then requested a hospital steward assigned him in Vermont to complete these returns.

It's unknown if he received this help.

Allen and M. Gertrude Lyon were married at Middlesex, Pennsylvania, on May 31, 1865. They returned to Rutland, Vermont, where he resumed a successful private practice. According to the 1880 Census, the Aliens lived at 76 Main St., Rutland; had three sons, a daughter, two female servants; and a young stableboy. Gertrude Allen died in 1889 and Allen died the following year of "apoplexy, duration of illness, 3 1/2 hours."

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