Elliott, Robert Brown, 1842-1884

Robert Brown Elliott (August 11, 1842 – August 9, 1884) was an African-American member of the United States House of Representatives from South Carolina, serving from 1871 to 1874.

He was born in 1842 in Liverpool, England. He attended High Holborn Academy in London, England and then studied law, graduating from Eton College in 1859. From there he joined the British Royal Navy. Elliott decided to settle in South Carolina in 1867. He was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1868 and began practicing law in Columbia, the state capital.

Elliott arrived in South Carolina in 1867 at the age of 25, where he established a law practice. Elliott helped organize the local Republican Party and served in the state constitutional convention in 1868 as a delegate from the Edgefield district. In the late 1860s he was hired by AME bishop and fellow future congressman Richard H. Cain to be an associate editor of the paper, the South Carolina Leader (renamed the Missionary Record in 1868), along with another future congressman, Alonzo J. Ransier. Around the same time, Elliott formed the nation's first known African American law firm, Whipper, Elliott, and Allen, with William Whipper and Macon B. Allen.