Edward Phelps Allis was born on May 12, 1824 in Cazenovia, New York, United States, the son of Jere Allis and Mary White. His ancestors on both sides had been among the settlers of Hatfield, Massachussets, in the Connecticut Valley. Young Allis was reared in conditions of comfort and moderate prosperity, as the terms were understood in those times in rural New York.
Allis attended Union College at Schenectady, from which he was graduated in 1845, during the presidency of Doctor Eliphalet Nott.
At first intending to prepare himself for the law, Allis changed his plans soon after graduation from college, went to Milwaukee two years before Wisconsin's admission as a state, and engaged in the leather business. He built extensive tanneries at Two Rivers, Wisconsin, but in 1854 disposed of his holdings and for seven years confined his operations to banking and real estate. In the first year of the Civil War, having an opportunity to buy a small iron-foundry in Milwaukee, he established the Reliance Iron Works, which he built up in his lifetime into one of the largest industrial plants in the Middle West.
In 1869, when the city of Milwaukee was installing a water-system, the Allis Company by underbidding competitors obtained the contract for piping, which it filled, although when the contract was awarded the company had no machinery for making pipe. It then installed the necessary pumps and engines for the Milwaukee service and within a few years became known as one of the largest machineshops in the country. Its products were shipped in later years to Europe, Japan, South America, and Australia.
When the roller process was adopted by American flour-millers the Allis works made the new machinery that was required in hundreds of mills throughout the country. Sawmill and mining machinery and heavy pumps were also made at the Milwaukee plant. The famous Corliss engines were built there, under the direction of a graduate of the works at Providence, Rhode Island.
Before the owner's death, in 1889, the business amounted to $3, 000, 000 a year, with 1, 200 employees. All this had been developed within a period of twenty-eight years, which included the serious business depression of 1873. In those years Allis became a convert to the Greenback faith and was that party's candidate for governor of Wisconsin in 1877.
He cultivated good relations with his employees and was prompt to reward diligence and efficiency. He became a patron of art and was known as a man of genuine culture. In his own lifetime the spindles of cotton-mills in New England, the home of his ancestors for seven generations, were driven by engines that were fabricated in his works on the western shore of Lake Michigan--a region that was only one remove from a wilderness when he migrated to it in his youth.
Allis died on April 1, 1889 in Milwauee, Wisconsin. About a decade after his death, the Allis company merged with others to form the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company.
Allis was noted as the founder of the Allis Company, entrepreneur and manufacturing innovator of steam engines, agricultural equipment, and heavy machinery, which later became the largest industrial employer in Milwaukee. Allis was the first to start the leather tannery business in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. As a patron of art, he was remembered in Milwaukee as a man who had contributed to the city's fame as an industrial center.
Allis was known as a man of genuine culture.
In 1848 Allis was married to Margaret Watson of Geneva, New York, by whom he had twelve children.
