SC Women: Eliza Lucas Pinckney
As a woman-owned business, we love to look at sharp women throughout history. One woman stands out in particular as a figure who had a huge impact on South Carolina: Eliza Lucas Pinckney.
Eliza was born Elizabeth Lucas in 1722 on the island of Antigua, and grew up on one of her family’s three sugarcane plantations on the island. Her family’s status afforded her a more thorough education than would have been standard for girls at the time. Like her brothers, she was educated in London, where she learned not only the standard “three Rs” of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but additionally French, music, and botany, to which she took a great liking.
Her father, George Lucas, moved the family from Antigua to South Carolina, where he had inherited three plantations, when Eliza was 16. The family resided at Wappoo Plantation, located south of present-day West Ashley near the Stono River and Wappoo creek. That same year, Eliza took up the management of Wappoo plantation when her father returned to Antigua, where he had been appointed lieutenant governor. He sent Eliza various seeds for her to attempt to grow on the plantations to supplement their cultivation of rice; among these were cotton, alfalfa, hemp, and ginger, but what Eliza is best known for is, of course, indigo.
Over several years of experiments, failed attempts, and persistence, Eliza developed a strain of indigo that could be successfully grown in South Carolina, and worked with various experts to develop a successful process for producing indigo dye. Her seeds and processes proved profitable in a competitive market, and indigo became second only to rice as the most profitable cash crop in pre-Revolution South Carolina colony.
Eliza’s success with indigo so affected South Carolina colony’s agriculture and economy that in 1989, she became the first woman to be inducted into the South Carolina Business Hall of Fame.
While her agricultural contributions were vital to South Carolina’s history, there’s so much more to Eliza Lucas Pinckney that makes her such an interesting figure to study.
One thing particularly interesting about Eliza is the degree of independence and autonomy that she enjoyed, which would have been quite rare for women in her time. When her father presented two potential suitors, both of whom were wealthy and well-connected, Eliza rejected both, a choice that was nearly unheard of in 18th-century South Carolina colony. She later became attached to Charles Pinckney, who owned a nearby plantation, after the death of his first wife, and they married in 1744, when he was 45 and she was 22. They had four children together, three of whom reached adulthood, and one of whom, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, would go on to become a signatory of the United States Constitution in 1788.
Eliza also left behind an incredible resource for historians. Throughout her adult life, Eliza kept letter-books, in which she copied conversations, letters, notes, recipes, and more details of her daily life. The books provide one of the most complete collections of writing from 18th century America, documenting the daily life of an elite colonial woman over a span of years.
Finally, it’s important to address a tricky topic: while we’re a woman-owned business and always want to support women, both presently and historically, we also think it’s important to try to give credit wherever it’s due. While Eliza is commonly credited with developing a strain of indigo and an indigo dye process that drew a considerable profit, it’s important to remember that she did so with the help of others: both an indigo processing expert from Montserrat, and with an indigo processor of African descent from the French West Indies, with whom she had the most success. While we don’t want to undermine Eliza’s intelligence, independence, and contributions to agricultural science, we do think it’s important to note that she likely made her progress using the specialized knowledge of enslaved people - something that is especially important to acknowledge since the expansion of the indigo industry also required the expansion of the human slave trade. Eliza enjoyed a high degree of privilege for her time, and it’s important to acknowledge the role that that privilege played in her success.
Recommended reading for more about Eliza Lucas Pinckney (links to Bookshop.org)
Eliza Lucas Pinckney: an Independent Woman in the Age of Revolution
Eliza Lucas Pinckney: Colonial Plantation Manager and Mother of American Patriots
