Responsibility.

Eliza Lucas was the daughter of Lt. Col. and Mrs. George Lucas. She was born on 28 December 1722 on Antigua in the West Indies, but only part of her childhood was spent in that warm climate. Eliza traveled to England to pursue an education, an unusual activity for young women at that time. In 1738 Lieutenant Colonel Lucas settled his wife and two daughters in South Carolina because of his wife's poor health. He returned to Antigua after he left his two sons in England, where they attended school. A competent seventeen-year-old, Lucas assumed the management of her father's three Carolina plantations.

Dedication.

A curious and industrious Lucas experimented with growing ginger, cotton, alfalfa, cassava, and indigo, a deep-blue dye product. Planters' frustration with indigo convinced them to invest time, money, and labor in rice cultivation. In 1740 she received West Indian seed from...