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my father has left mee a pretty good share, and indeed ‘Twas unavoidable, as my Mama’s bad state of health prevents her going thro’ any fatigue.

I have the business of 3 plantations to transact, w

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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 C

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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 C

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Town affords. But nothing gives mee more than subscribing myself
D

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Madam
Y

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most affectionet
and most obliged
hum

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Ser

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ELIZA LUCAS.

Pray remember me in
the best manner to my
worthy friend M

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Boddicott.
To my good friend Mrs. Boddicott.
May ye 2

^ond

.

What greater proof is needed that Eliza’s plantation life was no easy matter than “I have the business of three plantations to transact, w

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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 C

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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 y

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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, w