Boston Public Library - Electric Scotland

WILLIAM O. ALLISON, OF ENGLEWOOD, N. J. 283
1920. Albert Allison,' b. Brooklyn, N. Y., Jan. 17, 1876; d. at New
York, N. Y., June 18, 1876.
1921. Olive Allison,' b. New York, N. Y., Oct. 16, 1877; at school; res.
New York, N. Y.
1922. Thomas Allison,' b. New York, N. Y., Sept. 23, 1879; d, in New
York, N. Y., May 26, 1882.
1923. William Ontis Allison «
[1895] (William Henry ,7
Hendrick,^ Matthew,^ Joseph,'* John,^ John,^ Lawrence ^).
The following sketch of Mr. Allison was written by his
friend, J, M. Peters, Esq. :
Lawrence, the first Allison of this branch of the family
known in America, who was one of the early settlers in the
New Haven colony, left the place to join his son John whom
the records show was one of the founders of the town of
Hempstead on Long Island about 1644. Whether John was
born in this country is unknown to us, but he ajapears to
have engaged in this enterprise before attaining his majority.
In 1719 his grandson John, who was evidently a man of
some wealth for the time, went with a number of others
from the Hempstead settlement to the west of the Hudson,
and bought a large tract of land known as the Kakiat Pat-
ent, in Orange, now Rockland county. He subsequently
became the owner of a large part of the land lying between
what is now known as Rockland Lake and Stony Point on
the Hudson river. He had a numerous family, among them
a son Joseph, who added largely by purchase to his inherited
possessions in land, and was one of the most extensive
landholders in that section. Joseph's oldest son, Matthew
Allison, died before his father, and left a number of children,
among them Hendrick, who married Sarah Marks, a Haverstraw
maiden, with whom, about 1810, he settled on the
bank of the Hudson at a point considerably south of his
native place. Here William H. Allison was born in 1820,
and after marriage settled in old Hackensack, now Palisades
township, in Bergen county, N. J., where William O. Allison,
the subject of this sketch, was born on March 30, 1849.
The maternal ancestry of William O. Allison had resided
for more than two hundred years within a few miles of
this spot. His maternal great-grandfather [Jordan] was
French, having come to this country with Lafayette and
become a Revolutionary soldier. He subsequently married
a Jersey Dutch wife and settled upon the Palisades, a few
'
miles north of the present home of his great-grandson, whose
other ancestors on his mother's side were among the original
Dutch settlers at old Tappan, one of the earliest settlements
in New Jersey.