”Mr. Allen, of Missisisippi, Has the Floor - A Sketch in the House of Representatives” (detail), Harper’s Weekly, 1890, Collection of U.S. House of Representatives

ALLEN, John Mills, a Representative from Mississippi; born in Tishomingo County, Miss., July 8, 1846; attended the common schools; during the Civil War enlisted as a private in the Confederate Army and served throughout the war; attended the law school of Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tenn., and was graduated from the law department of the University of Mississippi in 1870; was admitted to the bar the same year and commenced practice in Tupelo, Lee County, Miss.; district attorney for the first judicial district of Mississippi 1875-1879; elected as a Democrat to the Forty-ninth and to the seven succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1885-March 3, 1901); chairman, Committee of Expenditures in the Department of Justice (Fifty-second Congress), Committee on Levees and Improvements of the Mississippi River (Fifty-third Congress); declined to be a candidate for reelection in 1900 to the Fifty-seventh Congress; appointed in March 1901 a United States commissioner to the St. Louis Exposition of 1904; resumed the practice of law in Tupelo, Miss., and died there October 30, 1917; interment in Glenwood Cemetery.