Originally published on February 24, 2021 (Episode 197)
Introduction
Eliza Lucas Pinckney was born in 1722 on the island of Antigua in the Leeward Islands of the Caribbean, one of the tinier colonies of the British Empire, and she died in 1793 in Philadelphia, the capital of the new American Republic. Those places of birth and death, and the seventy-odd years between the two events, encapsulate a life that not only saw tumultuous change, but helped to create it.
For Eliza Pinckney was one of the wealthiest, most respected, and influential women of her era. This was not only through the legacy of her remarkable children, and the labor of those she enslaved, but because of her own intelligence, entrepreneurship, and keen understanding of the world around her in all its diversity and complexity—with one or two important exceptions, as Lorri Glover makes clear in her new biography Eliza Lucas Pinckney: An Independent Woman in the Age of Revolution.
Lorri Glover is the John Francis Bannon Endowed Chair in the Department of History at Saint Louis University. Her previous books include Founders as Fathers: The Private Lives and Politics of the American Revolutionaries, and The Fate of the Revolution: Virginians Debate the Constitution.
About the Guest
Lorri Glover is the John Francis Bannon Endowed Chair in the Department of History at Saint Louis University. A specialist in early American history, her previous books include Founders as Fathers: The Private Lives and Politics of the American Revolutionaries, and The Fate of the Revolution: Virginians Debate the Constitution, both of which featured in conversations on Historically Thinking. She has written widely on family, gender, and political life in Revolutionary America. This is her third appearance on the podcast.
For Further Investigation
Books
Andrea Feeser, Red, White, and Black Make Blue: Indigo in the Fabric of Colonial South Carolina Life (2013)
Barbara Oberg, ed., Women in the American Revolution: Gender, Politics, and the Domestic World (2019)
Matthew Mulcahy, Hubs of Empire: The Southeastern Lowcountry and British Caribbean (2014)
Emma Hart, Building Charleston: Town and Society in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World (2010)
Digital Resources
The Papers of Eliza Lucas Pinckney and Harriott Pinckney Horry (digital project, behind paywall)
The Papers of the Revolutionary Era Pinckney Statesmen (digital project, behind paywall)
South Carolina Encyclopedia: Entry on Eliza Lucas Pinckney
Photos
Smithsonian Institution: Images of Eliza Pinckney’s dress
Listen & Discuss
What surprised you about Eliza Lucas Pinckney’s story? Share your thoughts in the comments — and forward this episode to a friend interested in women’s history and the American Revolution.
Share this post