the wife of Chief Justice Charles Pinckney. She was born on the West Indian Island of Antigua, in 1723, but most of her childhood was passed in England, where she was sent with her two little brothers to be educated. She had barely returned to the Island of Antigua, where her father, Lieutenant Colonel George Lucas, an officer in the English army was stationed, when it became necessary for them to go in search of a climate that would suit her mother's delicate health. Eliza was a girl of sixteen when they finally settled upon South Carolina as a place of residence. The balmy climate of Carolina formed a welcome contrast to the languishing tropical heat they had endured, and Colonel Lucas started extensive plantations in Saint Andrew's parish near Ashley River, about seventeen miles from Charleston.
At the renewal of England's war with Spain, the Colonel was obliged to hurry back to his Island position, and Eliza was left with the care of a delicate mother and a little sister, the management of the house and three plantations. It was a responsible position for a girl of sixteen, but she proved herself a capable, practical, level-headed young woman, doing a woman's work with a woman's shrewdness and tact. She entered upon her agricultural duties with energy and spirit, her plan being to see what crops could be raised on the highlands of South Carolina to furnish a staple for exportation. She thus tried plots of indigo, ginger, cotton and cassava. With her indigo she was especially successful, after many disappointments mastering the secret of its preparation. Her experiments in that crop proved a source of wealth to the Colony ; the annual value of its exportation just before the Revolution amounting to over a million pounds, and her biographer quite justly implies that this modest unassuming Colonel's daughter, of almost two hundred years back, did as much for her country as any "New Woman" has done since.
