A native of Lee, Berkshire county, Massachusetts, dating his birth on the 1st of February, 1840. His parents were John and Cynthia Heath McAllister. He prepared for college at Williams Academy, Stockbridge, in his native county; entered the freshman class of Williams College in 1859, and, his health failing, left near the close of the sophomore year. He read medicine with an uncle, Charles McAllister, M.D.; attended lectures in the Berkshire Medical College, Pittsfield; graduated in the spring of 1865; practiced three years in Stockbridge, when, his health again failing, he started for the west, reaching Dixon, Illinois, in the spring of 1869. At length, with his health partially restored, he spent the autumn of 1871 and the following winter in traveling through the states of Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado, and the following March located in Spencer, the seat of justice of Clay county. Here he steadily followed his profession, his rides extending over Clay county and into O'Brien, Dickinson, Buena Vista, Emmett, Osceola, Cherokee and Palo Alto counties. When first settling in Iowa he purchased land at Spencer; has opened a farm, which he worked by proxy, and has dealt more or less in real estate, success attending all his operations. In the autumn of 1877 Dr. McAllister was elected to the general assembly, representing Clay, Dickinson, Osceola and O'Brien counties. He received all but about two hundred votes, having the largest majority ever given in the district, and the largest received by any member of the of the house in the Seventeenth general assembly. He was made chairman of a special committee on the practice of medicine, and placed on the committees on railroads, hospital for the insane, asylum for the deaf and dumb, suppression of intemperance, and judicial districts. He is a new member, and says very little, but shirks no duties in the committee rooms. Representative McAllister is a Master Mason, was made so in Massachusetts, and is a member of the Spencer Lodge. He is a communicant in the Congregational church, superintendent of the Sunday-school, and was active and a true Christian man. He was president of the Clay County Bible Society. On the 1st of January, 1869, he was united in marriage with Miss Laura McAllister, an adopted daughter of his uncle.