Extensively interested in farming and also identified with the oil industry of the southwest, Joseph Newton Allen has made for himself an enviable place as a business man in Muskogee.
Born on the 7th of February, 1868, in Greencastle, Indiana, he comes of Scotch-Irish ancestry, through a line of Virginia and Kentucky pioneers, being the eighth son of a seventh son and the seventeenth child in a family of eighteen children.
His early education was acquired in the public schools of Greencastle, which is the seat of DePauw University, formerly known as Asbury University. When his public school course was completed he took up the study of law and was graduated at the age of twenty-one from the College of Arts and from the Law School of DePauw University, becoming during his student days a member of the Phi Delta Theta.
He was heavily in debt for his education and thus handicapped, started out in the business world. In 1890 he became principal of a ward school in Wichita, Kansas, and was identified with the schools of that city for a period of eleven years, or until 1901, spending much of this time as principal of the high school in that city. He then removed to Muskogee in the Indian Territory, where he was admitted to the bar and entered upon the practice of law but gradually relinquished his professional interests to concentrate his attention upon the farm land and loan business, in which he is at present engaged.
Having come to the Indian Territory when most of the land was in an undeveloped state, Mr. Allen acquired large interests and has been most active in transforming the raw lands into highly cultivated farms. He is now quite extensively engaged in agricultural pursuits and also has considerable holdings in oil land.
It was while residing in Wichita, Kansas, that Mr. Allen was married, in 1893, to Miss Mary Stewart and they have become the parents of three children: Ronald Stewart, Marion Sarah and Joseph Newton, Jr.
Mr. Allen was reared a republican but has maintained an independent political course since attaining his majority, voting according to his judgment concerning the capability of the candidates and the issues before the people. He is a member of the Lions Club and also of the Town and Country Club and he is interested in all matters of education, of moral progress and of good government, lending his aid and support in the furtherance of every project of this character in Muskogee.