Allen Loomis

Allen Loomis was a businessperson and politician in Suffield, Connecticut.

He was born 6 April 1795 in Southwick, Hampden County, Massachusetts to parents Ham Loomis and Elizabeth Allen, and settled in adulthood in nearby Suffield, Hartford County, Connecticut.

In 1836, he established a major gunpowder mill in Enfield, Hartford County, Connecticut, which eventually grew to become one of the largest such mill complexes in the United States.

Per an excerpt from the Hartford Courant (2000):

...The business began in 1835. Its principal creator was Allen Loomis, a trader from Suffield who bought furs from trappers in northern Vermont and New York State in exchange for gunpowder, cigars and other regional products. He soon realized he could increase his profits by making his own goods. He built a cigar factory in Suffield. Then he bought 500 acres of pasture in Enfield from Dr. David Allen, who had been a surgeon in the Revolutionary War, for a powder works. He signed on two of his brothers, Parkes and Neeland, and Allen A. Denslow of New Haven to work with him. They built their first mill in 1835, which ground together charcoal and sulfur into a fine powder. To that mix they added a little glue and saltpeter (potassium nitrate), which was imported from the British colony of India. The wet mix was then ground some more, pressed into sheets, pulverized, screened, dried and packed into kegs. The business was incorporated in 1836 as Loomis, Denslow and Co. ...

He sold his interest in 1843 and the next year served in the Connecticut General Assembly.

With his first wife, Eliza Hathaway (d. 1839), he had seven children, and he had one additional child (Helen Frances Loomis, b. 1848) with his second wife, Hulda Root.

He died on 25 October 1864 in Suffield, age 69, and was buried in Old Center Cemetery there.

Sources

• Holcombe, Jon and Sandy. "Allen Loomis." FindAGrave, published 11 February 2009. < link > Accessed 29 September 2017.
• Rhinelander, David. "Manufacturing Gunpowder - A Hazard of a Job." The Hartford Courant, published 28 January 2000. < link > Accessed 7 January 2023.
• Woodward, Walter. "Four Explosion Tragedy at the Hazardville Gunpowder Mill." Today in Connecticut History, published 14 January 2022. < link > Accessed 7 January 2023.