Cynthia G. Allen, beloved wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and friend, died peacefully on February 14, 2026. She was known for her playful wit and her penchant for stories, grounded in a life full of twists, travel, and hijinks, that often verged on the incredible. Among her best-known and boldest claims was to answer, when asked her age, that she was 27 years old, irrespective of calendar year. Having been 27 for 72 years, she is believed to have remained that age longer than anyone in recorded history.
The eldest of two children, Cynthia Gilbert was born on February 12, 1927 to Riley Gilbert and Julia Elliott Gilbert in New York City. She fondly recalled a dedicated patch of dirt in Central Park where she played as a toddler, and childhood summers spent with her mother’s family in Kennebunkport, ME, Fishers Island, and Lake George, NY. Her parents divorced in 1934, and the following year her mother remarried to Thomas Livermore Wells of Boston. From this union came two half-brothers who, tragically, both died from a blood disease before reaching their teenage years. The family moved to Toronto, where Mr. Wells, a geologist, managed a gold mine. Adventures ensued, set against the backdrop of the Canadian Rockies, Colorado, and elsewhere, including one episode in which Cynthia transported a gold bar bundled in her clothes for safekeeping all the way from Toronto to Boston. During the Second World War, she helped herd cattle for a summer at her relatives’ ranch in Elko, NV. She graduated from the Foxhollow School in Lenox, MA in 1945, debuting in New York the same year.
Subsequently moving to Boston, Cynthia met her future husband, William A. Allen II, whom she affectionately called “Algy.” The couple married on Fishers Island in 1950 and settled in Lunenburg, MA, raising four children between there and Falmouth, MA, where they spent their summers. Her adult life was rich with friends and an ever-growing family. An avid golfer, she was a member of the Woods Hole Golf Club for 60 years and made memorable trips to Ireland with her husband and their friends to play the famous links courses. At the Quissett Yacht Club, she satisfied her love of being in and on the water, and she instilled a similar love in the younger generations by graciously opening her home in the summer to her extended family. Among her greatest joys was hosting gatherings on Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, which she eagerly documented in an expansive collection of family photographs.
Cynthia is predeceased by her husband, William, her brother, Riley, and her half-brothers, Peter and Tommy, and she is survived by her children, Annie, Tucker, Julie, and Gus, as well as ten grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren (with three more on the way). A memorial service will be held in June at the Church of the Messiah in Woods Hole, MA.