Vincent F. Luti
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annals, his father George Allen Sr.4 Presumably, an early death prevented George Jr. from developing into an influential figure, and thus he had a limited, as yet unclear, impact on and interaction with carvers both known and unknown from Wrentham to Lancaster in central Massachusetts. Still, his story provides an intriguing glimpse into the workings of an eighteenthcentury stone shop and the amount of loving care and historical knowledge needed to establish the identity of any one stone carver. More importantly, the quest to identify the “real” George Allen Jr. demonstrates the extent to which the work within any particular shop was collaborative and the remarkable way in which carvers must have been bound up in a working and trading networking more extensive than anyone has imagined. A Theoretical Biography for George Allen Jr. The Rehoboth, Massachusetts, Town Records show the birth of a son, George, to George and Sarah Allen, March 22, 1742/3.5 The use of the name “George” was common among the various Allen families of southeastern Massachusetts but not in the Allen lines of Rehoboth or nearby Providence, Rhode Island, across the Seekonk River. The only confusion is with another George Allen of Rehoboth, son of Ebenezer Allen, who was born April 6, 1748.6 It is very easy to confuse the records on Ebenezer’s George with those of the carver George Allen Jr. Probably the real George Allen Jr. simply did not live long enough to accumulate much public documentation since the limited evidence suggests he died around the age of twenty-one or two. But how and when? Neither is known. He must have lived at least until February 18, 1764, as there is a general payment of that date to George Allen Jr. from the estate of John Dexter, Providence (to be discussed in full later). Other than three specific references to George Allen Jr. the rest of his story has to be constructed by inference from bits of circumstantial material. One piece of information that does not let George Allen Jr. fade away into complete obscurity was found by Forbes, as mentioned above. On March 24, 1762, the estate record of the Reverend Job Cushing of Shrewsbury states that “George Allen Jr.” was paid for gravestones 3-0-0.7 Unfortunately, this original effigy stone for Reverend Cushing was replaced in the 1800s with an uninspired urn and willow. Researchers assumed the original was removed or destroyed. Only in 1992, some one-hundred-ninety years later, did it come to light again to become one of only two documented stones to form the basis of the research on a body of work for George Allen Jr. The other documented stone was found by the author in Providence Probate Records (which Forbes apparently did not see) in the account of the estate of John Dexter, entered August 1763 to February 18, 1764: “paid George Allen 49-0-0” and “paid George Allen Jr. 28-0-0.”8 These unspecified