Robert Thomas Pircairn Allen, USMA 1834

Born 1813 in Maryland.

Drowned, July 9, 1888 in the Kissimmee River, Florida.

• Graduated fifth of 36 in the USMA class of 1834.
• Professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Transylvania University in 1834. Check this for it does not seem right.
• Professor of Mathematics and Civil Engineering, Allegheny College, 1838-1841
• Professor of Mathematics, Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky, 1841-1845.
• Founder and Superintendent, Kentucky Military Institute, the oldest private military preparatory school in the US, 1845, 1847, 1849, 1851-1854.
• Superintendent of Bastrop Military Institute, Texas, 1857-1861.
• Superintendent of Kentucky Military Institute, 1866-1874.

"Poe biographer John H. Ingram wrote to Sarah Helen Whitman that someone named "Allen" said that Poe worked "in the brickyard 'late in the fall of 1834'". This source has been identified as Robert T. P. Allen, a fellow West Point student during Poe's time there.^{"  [}Thomas, Dwight & David K. Jackson. The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849. New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1987: 141. ISBN0-7838-1401-1.]  Poe's time in the brickyard influenced the The Cask of Amontillado. Poe and Allen were WP classmates.

He married Julia Bond, niece of President Andrew Jackson, whom he had met while visiting the White House.

References:

• Texans in the Civil War. Colonel Robert. T. P. Allen.
• 1834 (Sept. ?) - Poe, perhaps, works as a laborer in a Baltimore brickyard. (Robert T. P. Allen, [Letter to the Editor], Scribner’s Monthly, XI, Nov. 1875, pp. 142-143.)