Eliza Lucas Pinckney
Eliza Lucas Pinckney is remembered for her efforts to lead production of indigo and silk on several of the South Carolina plantations that she oversaw. A member of the landed gentry in this southern colony, Pinckney’s agricultural innovations, family connections and extensive correspondence gave her a remarkable role in colonial and revolutionary eras of history.
Born on December 28, 1722, on her father’s plantation in Antigua, Eliza was the eldest child born to George Lucas and Anne Mildrum Lucas. She grew up in the colonial British “West Indies and, at age 10, traveled to London, England for education at a girls’ boarding school. Botany particularly fascinated her, and she studied it, along with literature, writing and music.
Returning to her family, she moved with them in 1738 from Antigua to Charleston, South Carolina. Her father owned three plantations in the Lowcountry, and the family hoped to settle in the area. With her younger brothers at school in Europe, her father forced to return to Antigua for British politics and her mother in poor health, Eliza Lucas became the matriarch manager of the family’s properties while still a teenager. Thousands of acres of land, plans for agricultural development and the forced work of dozens of enslaved people came under her direction.
Over the following years, she experimented with various crops in the Carolina Lowcountry—including rice, figs, oaks, ginger, cotton, alfalfa, hemp, silk and indigo. Indigo was a plant that created a coveted dye, and British authorities wanted the colonies to grow this lucrative crop even though it was not a natural plant to the Carolina region. After several years of learning and experimenting, Eliza Lucas and the enslaved workers on the plantations grew enough indigo and worked on perfecting the creation of dye. She sent a sample of the dye to Britain and an agricultural industrial for colonial South Carolina had been started. By 1775, one-third of the exports from South Carolina were indigo; during the American Revolution, this trade slowed but continued as interstate commerce.
Eliza Lucas spent most of her time on the plantations but occasionally journeyed to Charleston to visit with friends and compare notes or seek advice from other planters. Charles and Elizabeth Pinckney were friends and acted as guardians during times of her parents’ absence. Around the time of her success with indigo, her father planned for the family to return to the West Indies, and her friend Elizabeth Pinckney died.
She did not want to return to Antigua, and when widower Charles Pinckney proposed marriage, Eliza Lucas agreed to wed and stay in South Carolina. Married on May 25, 1744, she settled into her new relationship while continuing to innovate agricultural practices and correspond with botanists in England. Her husband served in British colonial government and was the first colonial-born attorney in South Carolina. Charles and Eliza Pinckney had four children and three survived infancy. The family traveled to England and lived in London for five years, but upon their return to South Carolina in 1758, Charles Pinckney became ill and died.
Widowed, Eliza Lucas Pinckney raised her children on her own and continued to manage the Lucas and Pinckney plantations in South Carolina, continuing to build on her previous successes with the indigo and other crops. Her children were influential in the founding of the United States. Her son—Charles Pinckney—signed the Constitution of the United States and later ran for vice-president and president several times for the Federalist Party. Thomas Pinckney served as a U.S. Minister to Spain, negotiating the Pinkney Treaty in 1795 which secured navigation rights along the Mississippi River to New Orleans and was also a vice-presidential candidate. Her daughter—Harriott Pinckney Horry—lived on a nearby plantation and was influential in preserving the family’s letter-books.
Eliza Pinckney organized her decades of correspondence into letter-books, saving these primary sources that give a glimpse into colonial life for a woman in challenging times and the agricultural innovations that she led. Unfortunately the preserved letters ended mostly in the 1760s, making it challenging to discover the details of her life during the American Revolution.
In her older age, she developed breast cancer and traveled to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to seek new medical treatments. There, Eliza Lucas Pinckney passed away on May 27, 1793, at age 71. President George Washington requested to be a pallbearer at her funeral and when she was buried in St. Peter’s Churchyard in Philadelphia.
