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Building work began on the Assembly Rooms in 1730 and was completed by 1735. However, they were first used in the summer of 1732 for Ebor Race week. The Assembly Rooms have since undergone alterations. For example, a new entrance front was designed by J. P. Pritchett in 1828. The Assembly Rooms were purchased by York Corporation in 1925.

Samuel and Mary Allen had seven children, five of whom were boys. Four of the latter became ordained ministers in the Church of England, and it is this factor which gives a distinctive character to the archive, which spans the period 1800 to 1880. Samuel James Allen (1797-1856), the eldest son was vicar of Easingwold, North Yorkshire from 1839 until his death, thus creating a local connection. He was an artist of marked ability with a passion for what he described as 'Archaeomania'. There is little information about Robert (1800-42), a merchant seaman until his premature death from cholera aboard ship in the Bay of Calcutta. George (1806-68) was also ordained and spent time as a missionary in India, while Isaac (1808-55) followed a similar career, distinguishing himself as one of the first army chaplains to serve in Afghanistan.

Two of Samuel James Allen's children have a special significance in the archive. George Samuel (1832-1902), like his father, was ordained and spent some of the later years of his ministry near York (in the parish of Kirkby Wharfe, Tadcaster). He also inherited his father's artistic abilities, working in a similar style and with the same kind of subject-matter. Samuel's youngest child Lucy (1836-1911) also has a local connection: in 1857, she married Joseph Foxley, at the time chaplain to the Archbishop of York and subsequently vicar of Market Weighton.