Red, White, and Black Make Blue: Indigo in the Fabric of Colonial South Carolina Life

Chapter 7. Slave John Williams: A Key Contributor to the Lucas-Pinckney Indigo Concern

99 chapter 7 S Slave John Williams A Key Contributor to the Lucas-Pinckney Indigo Concern during most of the 1750s, after she had produced excellent indigo on her father’s South Carolina plantations, planter and amateur botanist Eliza Lucas Pinckney lived in England with her family, and at some point just prior to that sojourn,she created a beautiful wrap for herself (illus.9).1 With painstaking,careful stitches, she crafted a looping, curving pattern of vines with delicate leaves, producing a veritable garden of foliage in which she might immerse herself. She chose to depict indigo plants on her wrap, and it is easy to imagine that this gorgeous textile was her personal tribute to her success with the staple,which enriched her family; her home, South Carolina; and Britain, her nation. She undoubtedly wore her wrap in the company of others and may have delighted in telling companions about her experiments in cultivating the plant: then as now, many people saw Eliza Lucas Pinckney as bound up in indigo. During her lifetime, she was recognized for her work with the crop; while in England,she showcased her pride in it by presenting the dowager Princess of Wales with indigo-colored birds; and upon her return to South Carolina,she lived where it grew,even as her estates and fortune diminished during and after the Revolutionary War.2 Pinckney’s wrap is not blue but white, the typical hue for such a garment of the period. However, just like the color white, the wrap in a sense contains many colors. The blue dye plants featured in the textile were produced via the work of several white people as well as the work of black and red slaves. The toil of extracting the dye from indigo and the people who did this backbreaking work are present but invisible in Pinckney’s finely wrought wrap. However, Lucas and Pinckney family documents as well as colonial records bring to light the names of some of the slaves who performed this crucial labor. 100 Chapter Seven Clues in these documents have enabled me to draw a portrait of one such slave, Quash, who proved instrumental in helping the Lucas-Pinckney clan achieve success with indigo. Eliza Lucas Pinckney depended on Quash, a mulatto slave carpenter who was likely the driver on Wappoo, the plantation where she first grew indigo. This man, ultimately christened John Williams, was her trusted associate as well as the artisan who made the wooden vats that ensured the production of fine-quality dye. Moreover, Williams helped provide Charles and Eliza Pinckney with a Charles Town home that reflected their stature as important planters and influential members of South Carolina society. Additional period documents provide less complete but still noteworthy information about other slaves who contributed to the Lucas-Pinckney indigo concern. Because these laborers were field hands and house slaves whose efforts to run the plantation and home were largely taken for granted, their names are recorded only when they are connected with specific financial transactions or counted in inventories as possessions. Although their lives are thus sketched merely in outline, they nevertheless can be firmly recovered.3 A Young White Woman Takes on Indigo Eliza Lucas Pinckney is a key figure in the history of South Carolina indigo not only because she was among the very first to cultivate the dye plant but also because as a female planter, she was atypical and therefore noteworthy. Although other colonial women worked outside the home—Nicola Phillips documents women’s prevalence in eighteenth-century business, Beverly Lemire reveals their significant place in the huge garment industry, and Mary Ferrari describes their presence in Charles Town enterprises4 —the popular image of an eighteenthcentury female from the planter class is that of a largely decorative grand dame who produced children for aristocratic dynasties. Eliza Lucas Pinckney is in fact remembered for birthing sons who were key participants in South Carolina and early U.S. history,5 but she also shines as a major agricultural innovator. Pinckney had success with her indigo experiments not only because of her intrepidness but also because the property where she first cultivated the plant was established on rich land and because several free and many enslaved people contributed resources and expertise to her venture. Her first indigo-growing Slave John Williams 101 plantation was Wappoo, named for the creek on which it depended for...