Ramsay, the historian of South Carolina, wrote in 1808, that the indigo trade proved more beneficial to Carolina than the mines of Mexico or Peru to old or new Spain. By the year of his writing, however, indigo (without waiting for extermination through its modern though less reliable rivals, the aniline dyes) had been driven out of Southern plantations by its more useful and profitable field neighbor, King Cotton, that had been set on a throne by the invention of a Yankee schoolmaster. The time of greatest production and export of indigo was just previous to the Revolution, and at one time it was worth four or five dollars a pound. And to-day only the scanty records of the indigo trade, a few rotting cypress boards of the steeping-vats, and the blue-green leaves of the wild wayside indigo, remain of all this prosperity to show the great industry founded by this remarkable and intelligent woman.
The rearing of indigo was not this young girl’s only industry. I will quote from various letters written by her in 1741 and 1742 before her marriage, to show her many duties, her intelligence, her versatility:—
Wrote my father on the pains I had taken to bring the Indigo, Ginger, Cotton, Lucern, and Casada to perfection and had greater hopes from the Indigo, if I could have the seed earlier, than any of ye rest of ye things I had tried.
I have the burthen of 3 Plantations to transact which requires much writing and more business and fatigue of other sorts than you can imagine. But lest you should imagine it too burthensome to a girl in my early time of life, give me leave to assure you I think myself happy that I can be useful to so good a father.
Wont you laugh at me if I tell you I am so busy in providing for Posterity I hardly allow myself time to eat or sleep, and can but just snatch a moment to write to you and a friend or two more. I am making a large plantation of oaks which I look upon as my own property whether my father gives me the land or not, and therefore I design many yeer hence when oaks are more valuable than they are now, which you know they will be when we come to build fleets. I intend I say two thirds of the produce of my oaks for a charity (Ill tell you my scheme another time) and the other third for those that shall have the trouble to put my design in execution.
I have a sister to instruct, and a parcel of little negroes whom I have undertaken to teach to read.
The Cotton, Guinea Corn, and Ginger planted was cutt off by a frost. I wrote you in a former letter we had a good crop of Indigo upon the ground. I make no doubt this will prove a valuable commodity in time. Sent Gov. Thomas daughter a tea chest of my own doing.
I am engaged with the Rudiments of Law to which I am but a stranger. If you will not laugh too immoderately at me I’ll trust you with a Secrett. I have made two Wills already. I know I have done no harm for I conn’d my Lesson perfect. A widow hereabouts with a pretty little fortune teazed me intolerably to draw a marriage settlement, but it was out of my depth and I absolutely refused it—so she got an able hand to do it—indeed she could afford it—but I could not get off being one of the Trustees to her settlement, and an old Gentⁿ the other. I shall begin to think myself an old woman before I am a young one, having such mighty affairs on my hands.
I think this record of important work could scarce be equalled by any young girl in a comparative station of life nowadays. And when we consider the trying circumstances, the difficult conditions, in which these varied enterprises were carried on, we can well be amazed at the story.
Indigo was not the only important staple which attracted Mrs. Pinckney’s attention, and the manufacture of which she made a success. In 1755 she carried with her to England enough rich silk fabric, which she had raised and spun and woven herself in the vicinity of Charleston, to make three fine silk gowns, one of which was presented to the Princess Dowager of Wales, and another to Lord Chesterfield. This silk was said to be equal in beauty to any silk ever imported.