Allison, Burgiss (1753-1827)

New Jersey clergyman and schoolmaster.

Ordained in the Baptist Church (1781). Master of the Bordentown Academy. Member of the American Philosophical Society. Author of American Standard of Orthography and Pronunciation, and Improved Dictionary of the English Language (Burlington, N.J., 1815). Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives (1816) and of the U.S. navy yard.

Son of Richard and Ruth Allison of Bordentown, New Jersey. Educated at Brown (B.A., 1777).

First letter in correspondence: May 1, 1788; Frederick Lewis Weis, “Colonial Clergy of the Middle Colonies,” Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., lxvi (1956), 169; Pa. Gaz., June 2, 1784; Early Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society . . . from 1744 to 1838 (Philadelphia, 1884), passim.