In the late colonial era, fathers typically supported their daughters by helping them find suitable husbands, providing dowries, and sometimes arranging for their education to help them manage large households. However, Eliza Pinckney’s father took a different approach. He entrusted his 16-year-old daughter with the responsibility of managing his struggling rice plantations in South Carolina while he returned to the West Indies. Her dowry consisted of access to her father’s business connections, a collection of seeds sent from, and a group of enslaved people whose labor was crucial to her business's success.
These assets proved to be a fortuitous combination for a young woman like Pinckney, whose favorite subject at her British finishing school had been botany, rather than the more traditional French or needlework. Embracing her interest in botany, Pinckney conducted experiments with various crops, including alfalfa, ginger, hemp, and flax. Her most significant achievement came when she successfully developed a new strain of indigo. This innovation met the high demand from English textile mills, which were constantly seeking new dyes.
Within a few years, indigo became South Carolina’s second-largest cash crop, transforming the colony's economy and securing Pinckney's financial independence. Her newfound wealth and success allowed her to reject suitors chosen by her father and instead select her own husband. Eliza Pinckney's influence and prominence were such that George Washington served as a pallbearer at her funeral in 1793.
