Joseph E. Allen was already set up as a school principal when he received his foreign teaching appointment in October 1901, at an annual salary of $1,200. He moved to the Philippines with his wife Minnie, and two children in 1902, to help establish the public school system. He was stationed in Naga, Cebu, where he contracted small pox and died after three weeks on 29 April 1903. He was buried just outside the local cemetery.