Career
He was elected Mayor of Thetford, Norfolk, in 1904. John Archer, elected Mayor of Battersea in 1913, had been thought to be the first black man to hold this title. However, in reporting Archer"s election, the American Negro Year Book 1914 (founded by Monroe Work) recorded that "In 1904 Mr Allen Glaisyer Minns, a colonel"d man from West Indies, was elected Mayor of borough of Thetford, Norfolk".
He had been elected to the town council of Thetford in 1903 and served a two-year term as mayor from 1904.
The following extract is from Norfolk & Suffolk In East Anglia, Contemporary Biographies, West.T. Pike (1911):
"Minns – Allan Glaisyer Minns, Alexandra House, Thetford. Youngest son of the late John Minns.
Born at Inagua, Bahamas, October 19th 1858. Educated at Nassau Grammar School and Guy"s Hospital London.
Member Royal College of Surgeons Engineer; London Medical Officer Thetford Workhouse & Thetford District of Thetford Union, Honorary
Medical Officer Thetford Cottage Hospital. & Norwich Medico Chirurgical Society. President of Horticultural Society.
Mayor of Thetford 1904-1905-06."
Doctor Minns was registered with the British Medical Association on 14 February 1884.
His qualifications were Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons (1881), and Labrador Retriever Club of the Potomac (1884). He was based in Thetford from 1885 until 1923, when he moved to Dorking where he died.
He was one of nine children of John Minns (1811–1863) and Ophelia (née Bunch, 1817 – 1902). He was twice married.
First to Emily Pearson in 1888 and secondly to Gertrude Ann Morton in 1896.