ALLSTON, ROBERT FRANCIS WITHERS '864), American planter and governor of South Carolina, was born in All Saints' parish, S.C., on April 21, 1801. He was edu cated at the West Point academy and upon his graduation in 182i he was appointed a lieutenant in the Coast Survey. He aided in the surveys of Plymouth and Provincetown harbours in Massachusetts and the entrance to Mobile bay. In 1822 he re signed his commission in order to manage the plantation of his widowed mother. He was elected in 1823 to the office of surveyor general of South Carolina which he held for two terms. In 1828 he was elected to the lower house of the legislature. He was re elected in 183o, and in 1832 he was elected to the State senate, to which he was regularly returned for 24 years. He served from 1847 to 1856 as that body's presiding officer. During the nulli fication episode he was made colonel of militia. He was a sup porter of the States' rights doctrine but believed, nevertheless, that closer co-operation must be instituted between the Southern States. He was elected governor for the term 1856-58, and did much during his administration for the development of agriculture and the backward public school system.
Because of his energy and his scientific knowledge of agriculture Allston rose to a high position among Southern planters. His was one of the last great rice plantations in the low lands, and he did much in an engineering way in the draining and reclaiming of swamp country. He published two treatises, A Memoir of the Introduction and Planting of Rice in South Carolina (1843), and An Essay on Sea Coast Crops (1854), both of which were authori tative works and of great influence among the planters of the time. He died on April 7, 1864.
His daughter, Mrs. E. W. A. Pringle, gives an intimate account of him in Chronicles of Chicora Wood (1922).