1722-1793

American amateur horticulturist who initiated colonial indigo cultivation. Pinckney spent her childhood in Antigua. Her father, a British army officer, moved the family to South Carolina and left the teenaged Pinckney in charge of their plantation, called Wappoo. She experimented with planting West Indian agricultural crops, including Indigofera tinctoria, which was valued as a dye. Her efforts in cultivating seed and manufacturing indigo resulted in that crop's being grown throughout the colony and becoming a major commercial export to England.