Eliza Lucas Pinckney

Elizabeth "Eliza" Lucas Pinckney (born December 28, 1722 in the British West Indies , † May 26, 1793 in Philadelphia ) was an American planter . At the age of sixteen, she took over the management of his three plantations in South Carolina during her father's absence due to the war . You are the first to cultivate and spread the indigo plantin the United States. The blue dye was in high demand in Europe and changed the economy of South Carolina profoundly. After rice, indigo became the colony's second most important export commodity and covered more than a third of its income from exports. While Eliza herself was originally loyal to England, her sons Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Thomas Pinckney later both fought the British in the American War of Independence . Because she made copies of her letters in her notebook, they are still preserved today and are among the most important personal documents of the times of American women of the 18th century.

Life

Childhood and early adolescence

Eliza was born in the British West Indies to Anne and George Lucas . Her father was a Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army and lived with his family on a sugar cane plantation in Antigua . Both Eliza and her brothers Tom and George were educated in London, where they lived with Mrs. Boddicott, a friend of the family. It is unknown how long Eliza lived in England. Since his wife was ailing, Lucas took her, Eliza, and his youngest daughter, Mary, named Polly, to the Americas in South Carolina in 1738 , while his sons stayed in England. About six miles from Charleston , Lucas owned a plantation on Wappoo Creek, where he and his family settled.

Unlike other fathers, Lucas never encouraged Eliza to engage in the handicrafts common to women of the time. In fact, he had a certain suspicion of women sewing and embroidering and is reported to have said that he "could never see women talking about their needlework without suspecting that they were making jokes". A little later war broke out between England and Spain and Lucas joined his old regiment on Antigua. He left the management of Wappoo and two other plantations that belonged to him to his sixteen-year-old daughter, Eliza, as his wife's health had not improved. In addition to the work on the plantation, Eliza taught her little sister and the children of the slaves and occasionally helped poorer neighbors in legal matters.

Botanical experiments

Like her father, Eliza became interested in botanical experiments and began trying to grow various plants from the West Indies in South Carolina. When she was 19, she found that she had planted fig trees to dry and sell the fruit. She also tried growing oak trees with the plan to use them for building ships. Her other experiments were sowing ginger , cotton and alfalfa . Although friends and relatives viewed her projects with amusement, Eliza was not deterred and wrote to her friend Mary Bartlett, the niece of her future husband Charles Pinckney:

"Your uncle says:" Tell the little visionary that she should come to town and take part in those amusements that are appropriate to her age. "Please tell him that what he now regards as quirks and projects, after and after could thrive. Of the many, one is certain to be successful. "

Flower of the indigo plant

In July 1739, Eliza wrote about her first attempts at growing indigo . The dye was needed for English uniforms and in this way Eliza hoped to make the English colonies and England independent of French indigo. It would also be a useful source of income for South Carolina, whose only exports of note were rice, animal hides, and wood. Their first attempts failed, partly because of frost wiping out their crops and partly because of sabotage by their dye maker Nicholas Cromwell. Nevertheless, she continued her attempts and in September 1742 she proudly reported to her father: "We will have enough left over to have a harvest next year."

In 1744, Eliza finally managed to harvest and process 17 pounds of indigo. She sent six pounds of it to England, where it was deemed to be of equal quality to French indigo. To spread the plant quickly, Eliza distributed the seeds among other planters. The harvest increased steadily, so that in 1747 indigo was shipped to England for the first time as an important export good. England financially encouraged cultivation in Carolina to outdo France, which further boosted the economy and plantations. Within the next thirty years, the indigo plant became South Carolina's most important export after rice. Just before the American Revolutionary War , the annual export of indigo had grown to 1,107,660 pounds (about 502,426 kilograms), representing more than a third of South Carolina's exports.

As a married woman, Eliza continued her entrepreneurial experiments, meanwhile on her husband's plantation, Belmont on the Cooper River. The war with Spain affected trade with England and the colonies were forced to manufacture their own fabrics. Eliza organized looms for her plantations so that the slaves could process cotton and wool into fabrics and tried her hand at silk production. She personally harvested the silk threads and was so successful with it that she was later able to have three dresses made.

Marriage and family life

While her father was away, Eliza quickly befriended the neighboring lawyer Charles Pinckney and his wife. Both of them often invited Eliza over and made their library available to her. At the Pinckneys she read both Plutarch and the works of John Locke , the latter at the suggestion of Charles Pinckney. In 1744, Lucas finally decided to bring his family back to Antigua. During this time, Charles Pinckney's wife died and only a few months after her death, Pinckney proposed marriage to Eliza, which she accepted. At the time, Pinckney was forty-five and Eliza was twenty-two. Pinckney had previously served as spokesman for the Common House of Assembly and was a member of the Royal Council. It appears to have been a love affair, as Pinckney renounced any dowry and Eliza wrote in one of her letters: “I felt as much affection for him as a human heart can feel. This, along with his virtues and fondness for me, created the strongest bond that can exist between mortals. "

For the first few years after the wedding, Eliza continued to oversee her father's plantations and raise their children. The date of birth of the first son Charles is given differently in various sources. He was born on February 14, 1745, according to the American National Biography . In a letter to Mrs. Bartlett, Eliza asked for certain toys to help her son study, as she and her husband wanted to teach their son the alphabet as soon as he could speak. “You will probably notice that we are starting early because he is not yet four months old.” The next son, George Lucas Pinckney, was born in 1747, but died a little later. Eliza's father George Lucas, after whom her son was named, also died that year. A daughter named Harriot followed in 1749 and the youngest son Thomas in 1750.

In 1753 Pinckney received the post of Commissioner of the Colony (in German: Plenipotentiary of the Colony) in London, an intermediary function between South Carolina and the English trade and plantation officers. To this end, the family moved to England, where Pinckney had inherited an estate near Durham from his late brother . To the delight of the Pinckneys, they were received at court by the widowed Augusta von Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg , and as gifts, Eliza's daughter Harriot presented the princess with a widow's bird , a Pope's finch and a gold warbler that she had brought from America. Eliza herself gave the princess one of the three dresses made from silk she had picked herself. After a brief stay in London, the family moved to Ripley, Surrey , where they lived for five years.

Return to South Carolina and War of Independence

Although the Pinckneys originally planned to stay in England until their sons finished school, they had to change their plans when the Seven Years War broke out in North America . In May 1758, Pinckney, Eliza, and Harriot returned to South Carolina while their sons continued to attend school in England. Despite her loyalty to England, Eliza was outraged to see how little the motherland protected its colonies in times of war. She and her husband planned to sell their estates and invest their money in a safer country. A short time later, Pinckney contracted malaria and died on July 12th. Despite the shock of her husband's death after fourteen years of marriage and the pain of separating from her sons, Eliza resumed her work on the plantations, which had been poorly managed in her absence. She also ran a small hospital when smallpox broke out during the war and, according to her own account, only lost one in fifteen patients.

In the following ten years, Eliza devoted herself exclusively to her plantations and her daughter, who married Daniel Horry on February 15, 1768, a rice plantation owner. A year later, almost eleven years after she last saw him, her son Charles returned from England. He and his brother had protested vehemently against the Stamp Act in England . In 1774 Thomas returned to join the American army with his brother a year later. When asked which side of the warring factions Eliza had been on, her granddaughter replied that she had “prayed to God to guide them [her sons], but did not offer advice or influence; for since she had done her best when the two were children to make good and wise men out of them, she now gratefully acknowledged that they exceeded her not only in size but also in wisdom. ”During the war, the family experienced Looting of their plantations and British Army incursions into Charleston. Eliza described the acts of the British as cruel and the eventual victory of the Americans as a “great liberation”.

The last few years

Hampton Plantation with the George Washington Oak on the left

Shortly after the end of the war, Eliza's son-in-law Colonel Horry died and from then on she lived with her widowed daughter Harriot. Around the same time, their son Charles lost his wife Sarah, after which Eliza took care of both his three daughters and Harriot's daughter. In the following years she devoted herself entirely to her grandchildren. She made her last public appearance around 1791 when President George Washington visited her and her family at Hampton Plantation, South Carolina, and had breakfast with them. An oak that President Harriot asked not to fell was named the George Washington Oak in his honor, and it still exists today.

On April 10, 1793, Eliza left for Philadelphia with her daughter and three of her granddaughters . She had cancer and was hoping to find skilled doctors in Philadelphia and possibly a cure. When she arrived she was already seriously ill and was noticeably worse. She died on May 26th and was buried a day later in St. Peter's Churchyard. At his own request, George Washington acted as pallbearer. In 1989 she became the first woman to be inducted into the South Carolina Business Hall of Fame because of her merits .

progeny

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Thomas Pinckney

Eliza had four children with Charles Pinckney:

• Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (February 14, 1745 - August 16, 1825); ⚭ 1773 Sarah Middleton
• George Lucas Pinckney (* / † 1747)
• Harriot Pinckney (* 1749); ⚭ February 15, 1768 Daniel Horry
• Thomas Pinckney (born October 23, 1750; † November 2, 1828); ⚭ 1779 Elizabeth Motte

literature

• Harriet Horry Ravenel: Eliza Pinckney . In: Women of Colonial and Revolutionary Times. South Carolina Heritage Series No. 10 . The Reprint Company 1967
• The Letterbook of Eliza Lucas Pinckney. Women's Diaries and Letters of the Nineteenth-Century South Series . Edited by Marvin R. Zahniser. University of South Carolina Press 1972, ISBN 1-57-003186-X
• Frances Leigh Williams: A founding family: the Pinckneys of South Carolina . Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1978, ISBN 0-15-131503-5
• Cokie Roberts: Founding Mothers. The Women who raised our Nation . Perennial 2005, ISBN 0-06-009025-1

Web links

• Eliza Pinckney's 18th-century gown to be restored
• National Museum of American History article on Eliza Lucas Pinckney

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Elise Pinckney: Pinckney, Elizabeth Lucas . In: American National Biography Online . Oxford University Press 2000, Online Edition . Accessed January 6, 2016
2. ↑ ^{a b} Cokie Roberts: Founding Mothers. The Women who raised our Nation . Perennial 2005, p. 3
3. ↑ Harriet Horry Ravenel: Eliza Pinckney . The Reprint Company 1967, p. 11
4. ^ ^{A b c} Cokie Roberts: Founding Mothers. The Women who raised our Nation . Perennial 2005, p. 4
5. ↑ Harriet Horry Ravenel: Eliza Pinckney . The Reprint Company 1967, p. 7
6. ^ Cokie Roberts: Founding Mothers. The Women who raised our Nation . Perennial 2005, p. 6
7. ↑ ^{a b} Cokie Roberts: Founding Mothers. The Women who raised our Nation . Perennial 2005, p. 7
8. ↑ ^{a b} Cokie Roberts: Founding Mothers. The Women who raised our Nation . Perennial 2005, p. 9
9. ^ ^{A b} Marvin Zahniser: Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth . In: American National Biography Online . Oxford University Press 2000, Online Edition . Accessed January 6, 2016
10. ↑ Harriet Horry Ravenel: Eliza Pinckney . The Reprint Company 1967, p. 113
11. ↑ Harriet Horry Ravenel: Eliza Pinckney . The Reprint Company 1967, p. 146
12. ^ Cokie Roberts: Founding Mothers. The Women who raised our Nation . Perennial 2005, p. 8
13. ↑ Harriet Horry Ravenel: Eliza Pinckney . The Reprint Company 1967, p. 270
14. ↑ Harriet Horry Ravenel: Eliza Pinckney . The Reprint Company 1967, p. 310
15. ↑ Harriet Horry Ravenel: Eliza Pinckney . The Reprint Company 1967, p. 311
16. ↑ Harriet Horry Ravenel: Eliza Pinckney . The Reprint Company 1967, p. 317
17. ^ Dress from the Pre-Revolutionary War-Era Added to Smithsonian Costume Collection , accessed January 14, 2016