South
Carolina Gardens - An Historical Vignette
In the
mid-1740s, an industrious, imaginative and enterprising
woman became known as not an horticultural experts in
their respective fields, but as managing her plantation
as what they would call today a brilliant "entrepreneur".
Born on the Island of Antigua, and educated in England,
Eliza Lucas came with her parents to Carolina in 1739.
When her father had to return to the West Indies for a
number of years, as a necessity, he left the management
of his estates entirely in the hands of his daughter Eliza,
who was then just eighteen years old.
This resourceful young woman kept a journal of her life
on the Carolina plantation, the business dealings and
of all of the commodities that she had grown - and her
growing interest in indigo. Lucas knew that rice, though
a long-standing profitable commodity in Carolina, had
to be grown in swamplands and watered from an embanked
reserve. In contrast, indigo could be cultivated on higher
ground. As indigo produced a dye that brought high prices
in foreign markets, Luca's had the idea to turn her production
towards growing indigo.
She married
in 1744 to Charles Pinckney, who afterward became chief
justice of the province. Together they worked to attain
maximum production. Lucas' idea and dream came to fruition
when few years later she was able to report that the annual
export of indigo from Carolina amounted to 107,660 pounds.
Bibliography
and Acknowledgments
Shown: Yellow Jessamine ( Gelsemium
sempervirens )
