an 18th-century Spanish-American counterfeiter, both before and after the American Revolution. He operated in Virginia and the Carolinas before the war, and in Kentucky and Illinois afterward. He was associated with Cave-in-Rock and his son, outlaw Peter Alston, and counterfeiter John Duff. He was an early American settler in Natchez, as well as in the Cumberland and Red River valleys in Kentucky and Tennessee. Upon arriving in the Natchez District of British West Florida, in 1772 or 1773, Alston became "a prosperous land speculator and wealthy planter, and, in 1776, possessed some of the finest palatial mansions in that gay city."
