ELIZA LUCAS PINCKNEY

1722–1793

In the 18th century, agriculturalist Eliza Lucas Pinckney became the first person in colonial America to successfully grow the tropical cash crop indigo. She went on to process it into a high-quality blue dye at a time when the world’s textile industry was burgeoning. Exports of the dye brought prosperity to South Carolina.

Eliza Lucas Pinckney was born in Antigua in the West Indies, where her father was a British Army officer. She developed an interest in botany when her parents sent her to school in England. In 1738, 16-year-old Pinckney moved with her family to South Carolina, then a British colony, where they owned three plantations. Her mother soon died, and her father was forced to return to Antigua on military matters a year later. As the eldest child of four, Pinckney took charge of managing the Wappoo Plantation, where the family lived, and its workforce of 20 enslaved people, and oversaw the other plantations: two grew rice, and the third produced tar and wood.

Pinckney regularly corresponded with her father, who would send her seeds from the Caribbean, allowing her to experiment with new crops, such as fig, ginger, alfalfa, cotton, and indigo, in a bid to supplement the income from their plantations. In 1744, Pinckney successfully cultivated indigo plants and was soon using them to produce high-quality dye. She exported large amounts of the dye to England for use in the textile industry. Sharing her knowledge with other planters, Pinckney initiated the “Indigo Bonanza” in 1745, when the crop was grown across South Carolina; by the start of the American Revolution in 1765, indigo made up one-third of the colony’s exports.