B6 Wednesday, Sept. 14, 1966 THE WASHINGTON POST

Florence E. Allen Dies;
Retired Federal Jurist

CLEVELAND, Sept, 13, (UPI) - Judge Florence Ellinwood Allen, who retired in 1959 as Chief Judge of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, died yesterday at her home.

Miss Allen, 82, who was also a champion of women's rights, was the first woman to be named to a Federal Appellate Court. She was appointed in 1934 by President Roosevelt.

Her associates knew her as a "two-fisted" woman - a fighter for principles. She took pride in being the first of her sex to transcend certain social barriers.

Another of her many accomplishments was in the field of music. A capable pianist, she spent two years in Berlin studying the old masters. She helped earn her way through school as music critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and as correspondent for national musical journals.

Judge Allen was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on March 23, 1884.

She attended New Lyme Institute, Ashtabula, Ohio, and in 1904 was graduated with honors from Western Reserve University. In 1908 she received her M.A. degree in political science and constitutional law at Western Reserve. Later she studied law at the University of Chicago and New York University and


The Washington Post
FLORENCE E. ALLEN

was graduated with honors from the latter in 1913.

She was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1914.

Judge Allen was appointed assistant prosecuting attorney in Cuyahoga county (Cleveland) in 1919. In 1920 she was elected common pleas judge and her vote was the largest on the judicial ticket of ten candidates. She was elected to the Ohio Supreme Court in 1922, serving two terms, 1922 to 1934.

The climax of her career came when she was appoint-

 ed, at the age of 50, as a judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. This was in March, 1934. Typical of Judge Allen's liberal viewpoint was her decision to bob her hair while a judge of the Ohio Supreme Court.

Old friends recall that while she was studying law she was earning about $5 a week playing the piano in an instrumental trio. When she was only 11, her mother took her to hear Susan B. Anthony and Anna Howard Shaw speak at a meeting celebrating the victory for women's suffrage in Utah.

Although Judge Allen's public career has been marked by many successes, she was defeated for nomination to the U.S. Senate by Atlee Pomenrene in 1926.

Last fall Judge Allen published her memoirs, "To Do Justly." Much of her time since her retirement Oct. 5, 1959, was spent working on the book at her home in Mentor, Ohio, where she lived since 1943 with a distant cousin, Mary Pierce.

When she retired she was 75 and had spent 25 years on the Federal Appellate Court which serves Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. She retained a title of senior judge.