"Camp-Meeting" John Allen of Farmington was the most famous revivalist in Maine.

He was a clothier by trade, but in 1825, when he was 30, he went to a camp-meeting held in tents pitched "in a forest in the easterly part of Industry" and was "changed."

He received a license as a local preacher in 1828 and in 1835 was made a member on trail at the Maine Conference, ordained Deacon and appointed to Rumford Circuit. He traveled through the woods and hills of western Maine.

The son of Capt. William Allen of Martha's Vineyard, he was the grandfather of opera singer, Lillian Nordica.