Robert Francis Withers Allston, 67th Governor of South Carolina

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Francis_Withers_Allston

Robert Francis Withers Allston (April 21, 1801 – April 7, 1864) was the 67th Governor of South Carolina. He was born in All Saints Parish, South Carolina in 1801.

He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1821, and resigned from the army less than a year later.

He was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1826, serving in that body through 1832. In 1834, he was elected to the South Carolina Senate, serving in that body until 1856, being appointed Senate President in 1847. From 1856 to 1858 he served as Governor of South Carolina.

References:

• Who Was Who in America: Historical Volume, 1607-1896. Chicago: Quincy Who's Who, 1967.

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https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/allston-robert-francis-w...

Legislator, governor, rice planter. Born on April 21, 1801, on Waccamaw Neck in Georgetown District, Allston was the fifth child of Benjamin Allston, Jr., and his wife Charlotte Anne, and was presumably named for two brothers, Robert and Francis Withers, who had assisted Benjamin in a particularly difficult debt transaction in 1800. Until 1809 he resided at Waverly, one of two family plantations on the Pee Dee, but he moved to Georgetown following his father’s death in 1809. He attended the free school at Winyah Indigo Society (1809–1812) and John Waldo’s classical school (1812–1817).

After four years at the U.S. Military Academy (1817–1821), Allston worked briefly for the Topographical Service. He resigned to return home and assist his mother with the management of the family lands, taking full responsibility for them in 1827. To supplement the family income, in 1823 he secured election by the General Assembly to a four-year term as surveyor-general of South Carolina. In 1828, pressured by friends, he launched his formal political career and won election to the S.C. House of Representatives, where he represented Prince George Winyah Parish from 1828 to 1831. He was subsequently involved in several disputed elections involving the Prince George Winyah S.C. Senate seat for the Twenty-ninth, Thirtieth, and Thirty-first General Assemblies, in large part because of his staunch support of nullification. His political position would best be described in 1838, when he claimed that his views were “based on the principles of Thomas Jefferson, as express’d during the discussion in Virginia in 1798 . . . [and consist of ] the belief that a plain, honest, common sense reading of the Constitution is the only true one and that in legislating for the government of the United States, nothing—absolutely nothing of authority—should be allowed to precedent as such.

”The political stress of this period was offset by his marriage without a dowry on April 5, 1832, to Adele Petigru, daughter of William Pettigrew and Louise Gilbert and the sister of Allston’s attorney and friend, James L. Petigru. They had at least nine children, five of whom lived to maturity.

After the nullification controversy had passed, Allston was reelected to his Prince George Winyah Senate seat from the Thirty-second (1836–1838) to the Forty-second (1856–1857) General Assemblies. He served on numerous committees and was elected president of the Senate from 1850 to 1856. His political career was capped by his election as governor in December 1856. A lifetime advocate of higher education, serving as a trustee of South Carolina College (1840–1864), Allston called for the transformation of the college into a university and pushed hard for educational reform throughout the state. Following the expiration of his term in December 1858, he served as a Confederate presidential elector (1861) and in a handful of other minor political roles.

Allston spent the last few years of his life trying to save his vast landholdings throughout the Pee Dee region, primarily in Georgetown District. An accomplished planter and agricultural innovator, he had authored several works on rice planting, including the well-regarded Memoir of the Introduction and Planting of Rice in South-Carolina (1843) and Essay on Sea Coast Crops (1854). In addition to the family plantations at Matanza (name changed to Chicora Wood in 1853) and Waverly, Allston came to control Waties Point and Friendfield (inherited from his aunt in 1840, with Friendfield sold shortly thereafter), Exchange, Nightingale Hall, Waterford, Rose Bank (or Ditchford), Breakwater, Guendalos, Retreat, Holly Hill, and Pipe Down. In addition to these 4,000 acres, Allston owned at least 9,500 acres of pasture and timber lands. In 1863 he added another 1,900 acres with his purchase of Morven plantation in North Carolina. His slaveholdings totaled at least 690 in 1864. Debt and the Civil War greatly reduced the value of his estate. Allston died from pneumonia (with accompanying heart disease) on April 7, 1864, at Chicora Wood. Initially buried at the Prince Frederick, Pee Dee, Chapel, he was later interred in the cemetery at Prince George Winyah Church. Devereux, Anthony Q. The Life and Times of Robert F. W. Allston. Georgetown, S.C.: Waccamaw Press, 1976.

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U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current Ancestry.com Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. Find A Grave 1,60525::0

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1,60525::12165560

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U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current Ancestry.com Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. Find A Grave 1,60525::0

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1,60525::12165560

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@R-2142462254@ U.S., Returns from Military Posts, 1806-1916 Ancestry.com Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2009. This collection was indexed by Ancestry World Archives Project contributors in partnership with the following organizations:California State Genealogical AllianceFederation of Genealog 1,1571::0

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http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=sse&db=usmilitaryposts&h=4827486&ti=... Residence date: Jul 1821 Residence place: New York 1,1571::4827486

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U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current Ancestry.com Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. Find A Grave 1,60525::0

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1,60525::12165560

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@R-2142462254@ U.S., Returns from Military Posts, 1806-1916 Ancestry.com Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2009. This collection was indexed by Ancestry World Archives Project contributors in partnership with the following organizations:California State Genealogical AllianceFederation of Genealog 1,1571::0

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http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=sse&db=usmilitaryposts&h=4827486&ti=... Residence date: Jul 1821 Residence place: New York 1,1571::4827486

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U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current Ancestry.com Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. Find A Grave 1,60525::0

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1,60525::12165560

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@R-2142462254@ Ancestry Family Trees Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com. Original data: Family Tree files submitted by Ancestry members. This information comes from 1 or more individual Ancestry Family Tree files. This source citation points you to a current version of those files. Note: The owners of these tree files may have removed or changed information since this source citation was created.

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@R-2142462254@ Ancestry Family Trees Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com. Original data: Family Tree files submitted by Ancestry members. This information comes from 1 or more individual Ancestry Family Tree files. This source citation points you to a current version of those files. Note: The owners of these tree files may have removed or changed information since this source citation was created.

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Allston Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina 1858-1874 http://library.sc.edu/socar/uscs/1997/allst97.html Seven letters, 1858-1874, of the Allston family focus upon Robert Francis Withers Allston (1801-1864) and his immediate family. The letters are closely related to the correspondence printed in The South Carolina Rice Plantation As Revealed In The Papers of Robert F.W. Allston edited by J.H. Easterby and published by the University of Chicago Press in 1945. R.F.W. Allston was a graduate of West Point, Class of 1821. After a brief stint in the military, he resigned his commission in 1822 and returned to South Carolina, where he devoted his energy to rice planting, a career that made him one of the wealthiest men in the state. When he died in 1864, his estate included over thirteen thousand acres of land and five hundred ninety slaves. Frequently elected to the South Carolina General Assembly, he also served as governor, 1856-1858. He married in 1832 Adele Petigru, the sister of James L. Petigru. Five children from this marriage grew to adulthood: Benjamin (1833-1900); Adele (1842-1915), who married Arnoldus Vanderhorst; Elizabeth Waities (1845-1921), who married Julius Pringle; Charles Petigru (1848-1922); and Jane Louise (1850-1937), who married Charles Albert Hill. The earliest letter, 13 December 1858, from Mme. R. Acélie Togno to "My dear Friend," apparently R.F.W. Allston, seeks assistance in selling her property at 46 Meeting St., Charleston, which had become a burden because of the "heavy interest on my debt for the house...." Mme. Togno operated a school for young ladies in Charleston near the house at 51 Meeting St., known now as the Nathaniel Russell house, which Allston purchased in 1857. A letter, 30 May 1862, from Allston's factor Alex[ander] McKenzie, Florence, concerns shipments of rice.Post Civil War correspondence between other family members includes a letter from Adele Petigru Allston, 11 May 1869, requesting that her son Charles locate and send his father's "memoir of rice" which Dr. Peyre Porcher, who "is writing something for publication," had asked for on several occasions. A 23 May 1869 letter from Ben, Elizabeth, N.J., transmits instructions for rice planting on one of the family plantations. That from Ben to Charles, 26 May 1869, describes the reaction of the former's wife to New York and comments on her state of health. It gives further instructions for the rice crop at Guendalos plantation.The final letter, 16 September 1874, is from Elihu Benjamin Washburne to Jane Pringle, the mother of John Julius Pringle, who had married Elizabeth Allston. A former member of Congress, Washburne was a leading Radical and an advisor to Lincoln. In 1861 he had been responsible for granting a brigadier's commission to U.S. Grant. He served briefly as Grant's Secretary of State in 1869 before resigning to take the appointment as U.S. Minister to France. In this letter, written from Carlsbad, Bohemia, where he was "seeking health and recreation," Washburne comments on political and social conditions in the South, parts of which were still under Republican control. "I earnestly desire to see peace, harmony and prosperity prevail over the entire South," he assured Mrs. Pringle. However, he faulted white Southerners for not joining with the "colored people" to "rule the state honestly and faithfully, to the exclusion of the vagabonds and thieves who have brought such disgraces upon the commonwealth."

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SC Governors – Robert Francis Withers Allston, 1856-1858 http://www.sciway.net/hist/governors/allston.html SC Governors – Robert Francis Withers Allston, 1854-1858

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SC Governors By Name | SC Governors By Term | SC History | SC Government Biographical Overview •Born: April 21, 1801 in All Saint's Parish, South Carolina

•Died: April 7, 1864 near Georgetown, SC •Buried: Georgetown, SC in Prince George's Churchyard •Religion: Episcopalian

•Political Party: Democrat

Robert Francis Withers Allston Courtesy of South Caroliniana Library Education •West Point Military Academy - graduated 1821

Occupation •Colonel, South Carolina Militia •Planter •Author

Major Events and Accomplishments, 1856–1858 •The General Assembly increased funding for South Carolina's public school system.

•The US Supreme Court made the Dred Scott decision - 1857 Other Government Positions •South Carolina House of Representatives, 1828-1832

•South Carolina Senate, 1850-1856

Other Accomplishments, Honors, Distinctions •Allston authored A Memoir of the Introduction and Planting of Rice in South Carolina, Report on Public Schools, and An Essay on the Sea Coast Corps.

•Allston won a medal at the Paris Exposition for the cultivation of rice, 1855-1856

Election Results •On December 9, 1856, the South Carolina General Assembly elected Allston for governor by secret ballot.

Web Resources •Allston family papers - South Caroliniana Library

 SC Governors – Robert Francis Withers Allston, 1854-1858 •Born: April 21, 1801 in All Saint's Parish, South Carolina •Died: April 7, 1864 near Georgetown, SC  •Buried: Georgetown, SC in Prince George's Churchyard  •Religion: Episcopalian •Political Party: DemocratRobert Francis Withers Allston Courtesy of South Caroliniana Library  Education •West Point Military Academy - graduated 1821 Occupation •Colonel, South Carolina Militia  •Planter  •Author Major Events and Accomplishments, 1856–1858 •The General Assembly increased funding for South Carolina's public school system.  Other Government Positions •South Carolina House of Representatives, 1828-1832 •South Carolina Senate, 1850-1856Other Accomplishments, Honors, Distinctions •Allston authored A Memoir of the Introduction and Planting of Rice in South Carolina, Report on Public Schools, and An Essay on the Sea Coast Corps.•Allston won a medal at the Paris Exposition for the cultivation of rice, 1855-1856Election Results •On December 9, 1856, the South Carolina General Assembly elected Allston for governor by secret ballot.Web Resources •Allston family papers - South Caroliniana Library