Rex M. Allyn
About the Artist
Rex Merrill Allyn (1887–1965) was born to Mary E. (Gibbs) Allyn and Frederick Hiram Allyn on September 13, 1887, in Wellington, Ohio. The family lived in Cleveland, Ohio, where Allyn attended art school.
Around 1910, Allyn and his father moved from Ohio to Bolton, North Carolina, where Frederick Allyn managed a working man's hotel and Rex Allyn found work as a lumber inspector. Rich in pine trees, the town had become the location of a temporary lumber camp community that served the Waccamaw Lumber Company, which had established a sawmill in Bolton in 1907 and became one of the state's largest lumber manufacturers. While working as a store manager for the Waccamaw Lumber Company, Allyn met his wife, Jean Innes (1892–1971), an immigrant from Scotland, in nearby Wilmington, North Carolina (F. Allyn, personal communication, December 5, 2012). The couple stayed in North Carolina, where they established a family. Their second son, Rex Melville Allyn, was born in 1917 in Columbus, North Carolina.
By 1930, Allyn was living with his father and two sons on Ellwood Avenue in Richmond and working as an artist. In 1931, Allyn was hired by the Virginia Department of Conservation and Development's Division of History and Archaeology to take photographs and maintain highway markers. Allyn became heavily involved in the division's historical highway marker program and the publication of its marker booklet. As a field assistant, Allyn traveled throughout the state to install markers at the sites of historic buildings and events. He also worked to ensure that older markers were properly maintained, which meant painting and repairing marker posts.
In his travels, Allyn also took hundreds of photographs of historic properties. The photographs served as the basis for artistic pen-and-ink drawings commissioned by the division for use in a publication on historic Virginia shrines. Using funds from the WPA's Federal Art Project (FAP), the division commissioned several artists to produce these drawings. Allyn was one of five artists to contribute to the project, producing fourteen drawings of historic houses and churches between 1934 and 1937.
A report on the activities of the History and Archaeology Division listed Allyn's yearly salary as $1,500 for 1935–1936, and $1,700 was requested for 1936–1937 and 1937–1938. The salary increase request might not have been approved, because the 1940 U.S. Census listed Allyn's yearly salary as $1,540 in 1939 for employment as a "field assistant for the State of Virginia." The division's waning funds were evident in company letters. In a July 1937 letter to FAP assistant director Thomas C. Parker, Allyn asked to keep artist Dorothea Farrington on the historic houses project, noting that Edward Darby had been transferred. He also commented, "I realize it is becoming necessary to reduce the number employed on many projects." The project likely began to diminish due to a lack of funding.
In addition to photographic work and marker maintenance, Allyn also contributed to the production of the division's marker booklet, which was first published in 1930 as The Virginia Highway Historical Markers: The Tourist Guide Book of Virginia, featuring the Inscriptions on the Official Markers along the Historic and Romantic Highways of the Mother State. In November 1940, division director Hamilton J. Eckenrode commended Allyn on the work he had done in preparing a new edition of the marker booklet. And in a report on the activities of the division, Eckenrode stated that the division had edited a new issue of the marker booklet, which was "chiefly the work of Mr. R. M. Allyn, who transposed the booklet into a guide to the highways of the state."
In November 1945, Allyn was offered a new position with the Division of History. As "Historian VII (field work)," he was responsible for heading the Division's tombstone project, which involved marking and maintaining tombstones of famous Virginians. He completed the "qualifications" section of the application with "4 years of high school and 4 years of art school." The "experience" portion of the application described his previous work with the division: "In a former position, as Photographer and Illustrator V, the applicant received 15 years training in connection with the Highway Historical Markers and in historical investigation conducted by the director and Colonel Conrad. This training is the essential preparation for the duties of the position." In his fifteen years with the Virginia Department of Conservation and Development, Allyn served in many capacities, including photographer, field assistant, illustrator, and historian. After working for the division, he continued to earn a living as an artist, painting landscapes and portraits as well as furniture.
While working for the division, Allyn and his family lived in an apartment on East Franklin Street in Richmond. Later he moved to a house in the country in Powhatan County, Virginia, where he spent the rest of his life. At the age of 78, Allyn died on September 13, 1965, and is buried at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Powhatan County.
View more drawings by Rex Allyn
References
Ancestry.com. 1900 United States Federal Census [database online]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004.
Ancestry.com. 1910 United States Federal Census [database online]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006.
Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database online]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.
Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census [database online]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.
Ancestry.com. Ohio, Births and Christenings Index, 1800–1962 [database online]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
Ancestry.com. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918 [database online]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005.
Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942 [database online]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
Causey, G. (n.d.). Brunswick/Columbus Connections: Some Things the Two Counties Share. Brunswick County Historical Society. Retrieved from http://www.bchs1764.org/brunswickcolumbusconnections.html.
Danville Artist Receives Honorable Mention. (1937, April 24). (Danville, Va.) The Bee, p. 2.
Establishment of Reallocation of Position application, 19 November 1945, Rex M. Allyn Folder, Virginia Department of Conservation and Development, Division of History, Records, 1927–1950. Accession 24806a-c, 25913, and 41571, State Records Collection, the Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.
Letter, H. J. Eckenrode to R. M. Allyn, 18 December 1931, Rex M. Allyn Folder, Virginia Departmentof Conservation and Development, Division of History, Records, 1927–1950. Accession 24806a-c, 25913 and 41571, State Records Collection, the Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.
Letter, H. J. Eckenrode to R. M. Allyn, 18 November 1940, Rex M. Allyn Folder, Virginia Department of Conservation and Development, Division of History, Records, 1927–1950. Accession 24806a-c, 25913, and 41571, State Records Collection, the Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.
Letter, R. M. Allyn to Thomas C. Parker, 12 July 1937, WPA Artists Project Folder, Virginia Department of Conservation and Development, Division of History, Records, 1927–1950. Accession 24806a-c, 25913, and 41571, State Records Collection, the Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.
Minutes, June 19, 1931, Virginia State Commission on Conservation and Development, Minutes and Program Meeting Books, 1926–1933, Accession 23645, State Government Records Collection, the Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.
Monthly Summary Report, Division of History and Archaeology, March 1932, Virginia State Commission on Conservation and Development, Minutes and Program Meeting Books, 1926–1933, Accession 23645, State Government Records Collection, the Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.
Powhatan County Historical Society. (2007). St. Luke's Episcopal Church Cemetery Burial Listing. Retrieved from http://www.powhatanhistoricalsociety.org/cemetery/stluke-epis-ch-cem.html.
Report on Activities of the Division, Division of History and Archaeology Folder, Virginia Department of Conservation and Development, Division of History, Records, 1927–1950. Accession 24806a-c, 25913, and 41571, State Records Collection, the Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.