Elizabeth Waties Allston Pringle

Pringle was born on May 29, 1845, at her family's summer home in Canaan Seashore, South Carolina, near Pawleys Island.[1][2][3] Her father, Robert Francis Withers Allston, was a wealthy plantation owner and politician who served as the Governor of South Carolina from 1856 to 1858.[1][4] At one point, Allston owned seven plantations, 630 enslaved people, and over fourteen hundred acres of land, on which rice and lumber were the primary crops.[3][4] Pringle's mother was Adele Petigru Allston, sister of the politician James L. Petigru.[1][3]

Pringle grew up on Chicora Wood plantation near Georgetown, South Carolina.[1][2] She was educated by a governess before enrolling in Madame Acelie Togno's boarding school in Charleston, South Carolina at the age of nine or ten.[1][3]

Pringle's father, Robert Allston, died in 1864, and much of his property was claimed by his creditors.[2] Pringle began teaching in a boarding school until her family was again able to live at Chicora Wood.[1][2]

Around 1880, Pringle bought the White House plantation from the family of her late husband after inheriting a large sum of money.[1][3] She later gained ownership of Chicora Wood plantation at the age of 51, after her mother's death in 1896.[1][2][3]

Facing decreased profits, Pringle began writing professionally to supplement her income.[2] From 1904 to 1907, she published a weekly column about her life in The New York Sun.[1][2] The column, as well as her subsequent books, were published under the pseudonym Patience Pennington.[1][5][6][4]

In 1913, Pringle published installments of the column together in a book titled A Woman Rice Planter, with some editing to reformat the essays as diary entries.[1][7] The book also included an introduction by author Owen Wiser and illustrations of plantation life by painter Alice R. Hunger Smith.[3][8] A Woman Rice Planter reportedly sold very well and provided Pringle with increased financial stability.[1] Pringle's second book, Chronicles of Chicora Wood, a memoir of her life from childhood through the American Civil War and Reconstruction, was published posthumously in 1922.[1][3]

Pringle served as the South Carolina Vice-Regent for the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association from 1903 to 1921.[5][4][9]

Elizabeth Allston Pringle married John Julius Pringle, a plantation owner and neighbor of her family's, on April 26, 1870.[1] The couple lived together at White House plantation and had one child, a son who died in infancy.[1]

John Julius Pringle died of malaria in 1876 when Elizabeth Pringle was 31 years old.[1][5] Pringle then went live with her mother at Chicora Wood and helped care for her brother's children.[5][4]

Pringle died at Chicora Wood on December 5, 1921.[1][6][10]