Washington Allston was born on 5 November 1779 at Brook Green Domain on the Waccamaw River in All Saints Parish, District of Georgetown, South Carolina. He was the second of three surviving children born to Captain William and Rachel Moore Allston. Allston's father, a wealthy plantation owner who also fought in the American Revolution, died in 1781; four years later, Rachel Allston married Dr. Henry Collins Flagg of Newport, Rhode Island. About the time of his mother's marriage to Dr. Flagg, Allston went to Charleston, South Carolina, to study at Mrs. Colcott's school. There he began to draw and create landscapes out of sticks, pebbles, moss, and other natural items. In order to prepare for entering Harvard College, in the spring of 1787 Allston went to study in Newport, Rhode Island, at the school of Robert Rogers. In Newport, Allston befriended William Ellery Channing, who became an influential Transcendentalist, and Channing's sister, Ann, who later became Allston's first wife. The friendship between Allston and Channing lasted a lifetime. While he was in Newport, Allston also first met professional painters--including the miniature portrait painter Edward Greene Malbone--and began to work with oil paints. He entered Harvard in 1796, graduating in 1800.
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