Eliza Lucas Pinckney is known as America's first important agriculturalist for introducing blue indigo dye into continental North America. Eliza Lucas was born in Antigua, an island in the West Indies, in 1722. She attended a finishing school in London, where she developed a love for botany. When she was still young, her family moved to the U.S., and her father acquired three plantations. At the age of 16, Pinckney took over the plantations near Charles Town, in the Province of South Carolina, after her mother died and her father, a British military officer, returned to the West Indies. After realizing that the growing textile industry was creating a need for new dyes, Pinckney began making a high-quality blue indigo dye in 1739. Her creation was a success: Indigo soon ranked second to rice as a South Carolina export crop. She went on to produce flax, hemp, silk and figs. Pinckney died in 1793, but her legend lives on. She became the first woman inducted into the South Carolina Business Hall of Fame in 1989.