I have the business of 3 plantations to transact, wch 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 at my early time of life, give mee leave to assure you I think myself happy that I can be useful to so good a father. By rising very early I find I can go through with much business, but lest you should think I shall be quite moaped with this way of life, I am to inform you there is two worthy Ladies in Crs Town, Mrs. Pinckney and Mrs. Cleland who are partial enough to mee to wish to have mee with them, and insist upon my making their houses my home when in Town, and press mee to relax a little much oftner than 'tis in my power to accept of their obliging intreaties, but I am sometimes with one or the other for three weeks or a monthe at a time, and then enjoy all the pleasures Crs Town affords. But nothing gives mee more than subscribing myself
Dr Madam
Yr most affectionet
and most obliged
humble Servt
Eliza Lucas.
Pray remember me in
the best manner to my
worthy friend Mr Boddicott.
To my good friend Mrs. Boddicott.
May ye 2ond.
What greater proof is needed that Eliza's plantation life was no easy matter than "I have the business of three plantations to transact, wch requires much writing and more business and fatigue of other sorts than you can imagine." Then comes the other side of the picture. "I am sometimes with one or the other (Mrs. Pinckney or Mrs. Leland) for three weeks or a month at a time and then enjoy all the pleasures Crs Town affords." Truly a versatile young person, this Eliza of long ago!
That her planting was no holiday business is shown by a memorandum of July 1739:
"I wrote my father a very long letter on his plantation affairs . . . on the pains I had taken to bring the Indigo, Ginger, Cotton, Lucern, and Cassada to perfection, and had greater hopes from the Indigo—if I could have the seed earlier the next year from the West Indies,—than any of ye rest of ye things I had tryd, . . . also concerning pitch and tarr and lime and other plantation affairs."
As has been said before, Eliza's ambition was to follow out her father's plan, to discover some crop which could be raised successfully as a staple export, and the determination and perseverance with which she set out to accomplish the task, shows that she was made of no ordinary stuff, even at sixteen, when the majority of girls were occupied with far different activity and diversions. Indigo seems to have been the crop most likely to succeed, and to that Eliza turned her attention with the intensity of purpose which marked all her actions. It was no easy achievement to cultivate indigo, as it required very careful preparation of the soil, much attention during its growth, and a long and critical process to prepare it for the market. After a series of experiments, she reported to her father:
I wrote you in a former letter we had a fine crop of Indigo seed upon the ground and since informed you the frost took it before it was dry. I picked out the best of it and had it planted but there is not more than a hundred bushes of it come up, wch proves the more unlucky, as you have sent a man to make it. I make no doubt Indigo will prove a very valueable commodity in time, if we could have the seed from the east Indies time enough to plant the latter end of March, that the seed might be dry enough to gather before our frost. I am sorry we lost this season we can do nothing towards it now but make the works ready for next year.
The death of my Grandmamma was as you imagine very shocking and grevious to my Mama, but I hope the consideration of the miserys that attend so advanced an age will help time to wear it off. I am very much obliged to you for the present you were so good to send me of the fifty pound bill of Exchange wch I duely received. Mama tenders you her affections and polly joyns in duty with