![]() The daughter of formerly enslaved workers-turned-sharecroppers, Sarah Breedlove triumphed over not only sexism but racism in her journey to become the country’s first Black self-made woman millionaire. For those wishing to avoid alcohol, the company also produced her remedy in lozenge and pill form. Pinkham literally became the face of her product-and a household name-when her photograph and name appeared on a newspaper advertisement for Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound “for treatment of menstrual discomfort.” In addition to ingredients like black cohosh and unicorn root (an actual herb), the mixture featured an alcohol content hovering near 20 percent well into the 20 th century, when it was reformulated. The cellar of the family home became Pinkham’s first factory her children got jobs to earn the needed capital. ![]() George Washington served as a pallbearer at her funeral in 1793. Within a handful of years, indigo became the colony’s second-largest cash crop and Pinckney became wealthy enough to reject suitors recommended by her father, instead selecting her own husband. Pinckney experimented with alfalfa, ginger, hemp and flax, but struck gold when she found a way to develop a new strain of indigo that English textile mills-in constant search of new dyes-eagerly snapped up. Those assets turned out to be an auspicious combination for a young woman like Pinckney, whose favorite subject at her British finishing school had been botany rather than French or needlework. Her dowry included the ability to draw on her father’s business connections, a collection of seeds he sent her from Antigua and a group of enslaved people whose intensive labor facilitated her business’s success. Eliza Pinckney’s father instead handed his 16-year-old daughter the job of managing his struggling rice plantations in South Carolina, while he returned to the West Indies. In the late colonial era, fathers supported their daughters by helping them find husbands and funding dowries-and perhaps by giving them an education that would help them oversee a large household. ![]() The businesses these women launched-some of which survived for a century or longer-turned their founders into role models for more contemporary American moguls like Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart. Still, some tapped family connections, sussed out unique business opportunities and beat the considerable odds. They couldn’t open bank accounts in their own names, obtain a loan-or even vote. But throughout much of American history, female entrepreneurs faced especially daunting obstacles. Starting a new business has rarely been an easy endeavor. ![]()
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