Eliza Lucas Pinckney
Elizabeth “Eliza” Lucas Pinckney (28 Dec. 1722 - 26 May 1793) was an educated and successful plantation manager. She was born in the West Indies, but her father relocated the family to South Carolina. At age sixteen, she began the task of overseeing their “Wappoo” plantation when her father had to return to his post in Antigua. Eliza experimented with West Indian crops, including commercial indigo (Indigofera tinctoria) used for blue dye, which proved a successful and profitable enterprise. Her letterbook, which is, according to the ANB, the most substantial body of writings by a mid-eighteenth-century American woman, reveals the management responsibilities women could assume, as well as the intellectual sophistication they brought to gardening. Her letters describing garden design provide rare documentation of the refined taste of the Carolina plantation. [1]
Terms
Avenue, Basin, Bowling Green, Green, Grove, Lake/Pond, Mound/Mount, Nursery, Orchard, Plot/Plat, Prospect, Thicket, Walk
Citations
- Pinckney, Eliza Lucas, 1743, in a letter to Miss Bartlett, describing Charleston, S.C. (1972: 62):
“I . . . cant say one word on the other seats I saw in this ramble, except the Count’s large double row of Oaks on each side the Avenue that leads to the house—which seemed designed by nature for pious meditation and friendly converse.”[2]
References
American National Biography online: http://www.anb.org/articles/01/01-00737.html?a=1&n=pinckney&d=10&ss=4&q=6
The Library of Congress: http://lccn.loc.gov/mm%2082059840
South Carolina Historical Society Archives: http://www.southcarolinahistoricalsociety.org/
The Digital Edition of Eliza Lucas Pinckney & Harriott Pinckney Horry, 1739 – 1830: http://src6.cas.sc.edu/poelp/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliza_Lucas
Notes
- ↑ O'Malley, Therese, Elizabeth Kryder-Reid, and Anne Helmreich. Keywords in American Landscape Design. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010, p. 27 and Elise Pinckney. "Pinckney, Elizabeth Lucas"; http://www.anb.org/articles/01/01-00737.html; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000. Access Date: Tue Jul 23 16:06:38 EDT 2013 Copyright ©2000 American Council of Learned Societies. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
- ↑ Pinckney, Eliza Lucas and Elise Pinckney (ed.). 1972. The Letterbook of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, 1739-1762. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press
