Biographical sketch
The Allison family traces paternal lineage to John Fall Allison (1827-1897), who arrived in what would be named the Princeton area in about 1860. John Fall Allison is the namesake of the Allison Pass, which connects the Similkameen to the Fraser Valley.
Allison married Nora Yakimtikum in 1862. “Nora and John Fall had one girl and two boys, but when in 1868 John Fall found a white partner, Susan Louisa Moir, the daughter of a Ceylon tea plantation owner, he started a second family. Nora’s sons accompanied her to the reserve and remained within First Nations culture, while her daughter Lily stayed within the Allison household as a servant, and after Lily married, her family, from which Scott descends, shifted more towards European culture.” (http://www.vancouver-historical-society.ca/PDF/March2015.pdf)
This portion of the Allison Family fonds is associated with the branch of the family with the surname Thomas, or, the descendants of John Fall Allison’s daughter Caroline Allison, who married William Heald Thomas, and with whom she raised four children.
Scope and content
Fonds consists of the papers, photographs, and compiled collections relating to one branch of the Allison Family of Princeton, BC, with predominant coverage of the branch of the family with the surname Thomas. This branch has its genesis with Caroline Allison (1878-1975), daughter of John Fall Allison, who married William Heald Thomas. Their four children, particularly Roy Edward Thomas (1920-1999) are represented in this portion of the family fonds.