Frances Williams (Brown) Allen Ward was born 4 May 1915 in Boston, MA, the daughter of Philip Carter Brown and Marguerite Louise Williams, and died on Tuesday, March 22, 2016 at Loomis Village, South Hadley, MA. Frances "Fran" "Franny" Brown attended the Dover, NH elementary schools and graduated from Dana Hall School '33 and Wellesley College '37, where she was a member of the Zeta Alpha society.
Fran Allen worked for Blue Cross / Blue Shield in Boston as a statistical analyst during the 1940s. Later when she lived in Bronxville, she was a tutor in mathematics, focusing on troubled boys. She also served as a court monitor and was occasionally a statistical analyst for Westchester County.
Fran married first Dr. Fred Harold "Hal" Allen on 16 July 1938 in Dover, NH; and they had four children. Dr. Hal Allen was a world-renowned hematologist and geneticist, especially known for his breakthrough work on Rh-negative blood transfusions for newborn infants with erythroblastosis fetalis, his discovery of several blood group types, and his work on paternity and grand-paternity testing. Hal Allen died in 1987. Fran married second Rev. Philip Hebard Ward in Nov 2001 at Loomis Village in South Hadley, MA. Rev. Phil H. Ward was a congregational minister and college professor in Lebanon and the US. He taught at Northfield Mount Hermon School from 1947 to 1951 and served as pastor of the Federated Church of Chicopee. Phil Ward died in 2003. After marrying Hal, Fran lived in first in Boston. During the war, Hal was stationed at the Bradley Field Army Air Base, and the family moved to various locations in the Connecticut River Valley. In 1947 the family moved to Newton, MA, and then in 1963 to Bronxville, NY. In 1987, she and Hal moved to Groton, MA. In 1996, Fran moved to Loomis Village, South Hadley, MA.
Always ready for a good time, Fran was a member of the "Fun and Games Group" of Bronxville, NY. She was an avid dancer. Fran was hostess for Hal's medical peers when they came to the NY Medical Center, and often traveled with him around the world to conferences. The most unusual of those trips involved the entire family for six weeks in a small village in the Andes mountains of Peru in 1956. Here Hal set up a lab in the ground floor of their temporary home and searched for an elusive blood type.
Fran is survived by three of her children: Philip Brown Allen (Ellen), Mark Harold Allen (Pat), and Barbara Jean (Allen) Brewster Sanderson (Bob Sanderson); her grandchildren: Elizabeth Whitney Allen Rosenbaum (Scott), Katherine Lynne Allen-Brezsnyak (Mike), Emily Winslow Allen (Michael Marks), Benjamin Sweetser Allen; Christopher Taft Allen (Trisha), David Webster Allen (Jordana Phillips); Donald Ryerson Brewster (Rebekah), Frances William Brewster (Judith Galvan); Todd Edward Allen (Sara), and Rebecca Ann Allen; her daughter-in-law Elizabeth (Jaworski) Allen Spratt; her brother Frank Bartlett Williams Brown; and her twelve great-grandchildren.
She was pre-deceased by her husbands, Dr. Hal Allen and Rev. Phil Ward; her son, Dwight Bickford Allen, and her sister Dr. Mary Phyllis (Brown) Rahmanop Wentworth Davis. She also leaves Rev. Ward's children, Jay Ward and Sarah Neusius.