Hiram Storrs was Allen lumberman and businessman born in Chelsea, Vermont. He moved to the West in 1832 and first went to Illinois, and then in 1834 to the region of Menomonie where he operated a sawmill.

In 1846 he purchased an interest in a sawmill at Chippewa Falls and built the first flour mill there in 1852, and then opened a large general store in 1854. He was known as "King Allen" because of his many business holdings and arbitrary methods.

A Whig and later a Republican, he was county treasurer in 1853, and Chippewa Falls' first postmaster in 1855. His lumber company platted the village of Chippewa Falls in 1856, laid out a road from there to the Mississippi River, and aided in building steamboats to navigate the Chippewa River. After failure in 1859, the company's lands eventually passed into the Weyerhaeuser holdings, but Allen continued to lumber until 1879. He was vice-president of the Chippewa Falls and Western R.R., formed in 1874. 

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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]