Ray Allen was born 22 July 1895, the son of James A and Nettie (Cobb) Allen. Allen always claimed his birth place as Caraigo, Ohio, however his actual birth record was filed in Amboy, Fulton County, Ohio, where his parents lived. Ray’s father, a railroad engineer, died 5 March 1916, drowning in the Wabash River in Peru. The coroner suspected he had committed suicide. His body wasn’t recovered for over a month. Ray registered for the draft on 5 June 1917 in Peru while brakeman on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. The registrar described him as being of medium height, medium build, with blue eyes and dark hair. Just two weeks later, he married twenty-two year old Ruth Elva (Gettys) Kaylor Egolf 18 June 1917 in Miami County. Unfortunately, the marriage ended tragically when twenty-two year old Ruth died Peru of pneumonia just two months later following a miscarriage. The child would have been the first for Ray and the third for Ruth Gettys. On 28 June 1918, Ray, a member of Battery A, 134rd Field Artillery, 37th Division, sailed out of Brooklyn, New York, on the S S Nestor, headed to France. Private Allen, along with the rest of the Camp Taylor Detachment of the 134th Field Artillery, departed Brest France on 30 March 1919 aboard the USS President Grant. Ray married a second time on 26 May 1919, in Chicago, Illinois, to Ruth L. See, daughter of Alonzo Jerome and Margaret (Deibert) See of Miami County. Ruth had given birth daughter Charlotte Lou, born 18 September 1918 in Indianapolis, Indiana, while Ray was serving with the U S Army in France. By January of 1920, the family was living with Ruth’s parents in Peru. The 1930 census found Ray living in Peru as a boarder. He is identified as married, but with no wife on site. It is unclear when or where Ruth See and Ray parted ways, but by 1934, Ruth was living in Muncie, Delaware County as the wife of Harold R. Dailey.

Ray passed away 1 September 1937 at Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio at the VA Hospital where he was being treated for Chronic Pulmonary Tuberculosis. Burial was at Holy Cross and Saint Joseph Cemetery, Indianapolis, Marion County, Indiana