Chicora Wood Plantation
Chicora Wood Plantation, originally called Matanzas, is a historic rice plantation in Georgetown County, South Carolina, about 12 miles northeast of Georgetown along County Road 52. The plantation began in the early 1730s, and its 1819 plantation house still stands.
In 1827, Robert Francis Withers Allston left his job as South Carolina’s surveyor-general to run Chicora Wood full time, after inheriting it. It became the base for his network of rice plantations, producing about 840,000 pounds of rice in 1850 and 1.5 million pounds by 1860. Slavery was central to its work, with 401 enslaved people in 1850 rising to 630 by 1860.
After Allston died, Chicora Wood passed to his wife, and their daughter Elizabeth Allston Pringle gained ownership in 1896. Pringle wrote A Woman Rice Planter and Chronicles of Chicora Wood about life on the plantation and managed it from 1896 until her death in 1921.
The house is Greek Revival in style, built on a raised basement, with several outbuildings still surviving, including the rice mill complex. The property covers about 40 acres and is part of the Pee Dee River Rice Planters Historic District. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 11, 1973.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 14:11 (CET).