Hottest Pre-Revolutionary Plantation Manager/Botanist Hottie!

I thought it was about time to talk about some lovely ladies and this week we're going all the way back to the 18th century. This hottie is the hottest of all the 18th century American Plantation Managers Who Made Important Advancements in Botany and Agriculture*. It is, of course, Eliza Lucas Pinckney!

This is a good week, because this hottie is not only hot, she's also very, very cool. She was born in the West Indies (probably Antigua) in 1722, but moved to South Carolina when she was young. When Eliza was 16 (!) years-old, she was left in charge of her father's plantations because he had to go back to Antigua. She experimented with Indigo and despite sabotage efforts by Nicholas Cromwell (seriously!), she succeeded in successfully making the dye... with a great deal of help from some slaves. Ok, so, the slave thing isn't hot or cool. At all. Anyway, the indigo was exported to England and was South Carolina's most valuable crop until the cotton gin was invented (damn you, Eli Whitney!). She also introduced alfalfa into this country and raised her own silk worms. And her son signed the Constitution (yes, THE Constitution!-- the one that W ignores). AND George Washington was one of her pall bearers. How cool is she?

But there aren't that many pictures of her. Boo!

*NOTE: I know that's a fairly specific category, but Pre-Revolutionary War Hottie seemed like too big of a category. So deal with it!!!!
xoxo

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Works Consulted this Month

Ok, so I used the South Carolina Women of the American Revoution page at this website: http://sciway3.net/clark/revolutionarywar/elizelucas.html
And Distinguished Women of Past and Present's page about Eliza here: http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/pinckney.html
Also there was good info about Sir Isaac brock at http://www.warof1812.ca/ and the POTUS website uhhh... http://www.potus.com/ has lots of fun trivia about all the presidents. I also used this great social studies book for 5th graders that was published by Scott Foresman. I'm not sure, but I think the title was SOCIAL STUDIES: UNITED STATES or something similar. Sorry. I thought I'd made myself a copy of the title page; I hadn't. And I used a book for 5th graders because it had more pictures. For high school and even mid schoolers they apparently care more about the students knowing what the people did rather than knowing what they looked like. Whatevs.
Oh, and I used Wikipedia, too.

Second Hot Hottie!

This time around we're going earlier into the 19th century to find the Hottest Hottie in the War of 1812!

This hottie was chosen because with his broad shoulders, strong jaw, and red jacket, this 6'3" slab of man would've made Lydia and Kitty Bennett lose their shit if he'd ever happened into Meryton. The War of 1812 Hottie is Sir Isaac Brock!

But of course it is not only fictional characters of Jane Austen's that might find him attractive. He's empircially a good lookin' guy. Story goes that Chief Tecumseh declared "Now here is a man!" after meeting him. Damn straight, Tecumseh, damn straight.


Brock helped to defend the Canadian border from the invading American all while being totally hot. He joined the military at the age of only 15, and was a brigadier-general (yeah, I don't really know what that means) by the time the U.S. declared war against Britain... which was in 1812, surprisingly enough. He was knighted for his efforts during the war and was called the Hero of Upper Canada. And he died when he was 42 in 1812 in the battle of Queenston Heights. But you know what Debbie Harry said, "Die young, stay pretty." Oh, also, he didn't really like Canada all that much and really wanted to go back to Europe and fight Napoleon.

P.S. For those of you playing along at home, be sure to search for him as Sir Isaac Brock. Because if you just google Isaac Brock you end up with a lot of sites concerning the singer/guitarist of Modest Mouse.

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First Hot Hottie!

Seeing as this list is to have no particular order, I'm going to go ahead and start with the...

Hottest Antebellum Hottie!

Our hottest hottie of the Antebellum period is none other than the 14th President of the United States
Franklin Pierce!

Ok, ok. So it's hard to initially see past his hair to find the hotness. But he's got a great jaw, nice eyes and amazing cheekbones. Seriously, Paulina Porizkova has got nothing on him cheekbone-wise. And even though his hair isn't always great, at its worst it is very Snape-esque in that it's all dark and stringy and sorta oily looking. But as we all know, Professor Snape is still very, very HOT.

Franklin Pierce



Alan Rickman as Severus Snape

See, sometime you just have to re-contextualize bad hair to see the overall hotness.
Also, we have to remember than NO ONE looks good in 19th century photographs, so one has to assume a couple of degrees hotter than the photograph actually shows. Just to be fair.

Of course, another of the defining characteristics of this hottie list is the fact that it is about physical hotness. Umm... because he wasn't much of a President. He was a doughface (which is one of those great 19th century words -- it means a Northerner who sided with the South before and through the Civil War) who did a lot to really get the Civil War going, such as supporting the Kansas-Nebraska Act which left open the possibility of slaves in the west. So overall, yeah, booo. Not much of a President. Oh, and also, he was a raging alcoholic. Yeah, addicts who don't actually do the whole recovery process before becoming President of the United States generally are lousy, awful, lame Presidents. Just, you know, in general.

The other interesting things about his presidency are just random trivia. Pierce was good friends with Nathaniel Hawthorne in college. They were in the same class is Henry Wordsworth Longfellow. Pierce was the first president to have a Christmas tree in the White House. He also had the awesomest presidential campaign slogan ever: "We Polked you in 1844; we shall Pierce you in 1852". Seriously. You have to love any campaign slogan with a semi-colon in it. Oh, and also, he was preceded by Millard Fillmore who wasn't at all hot, but there is a clothing company named Fillmore that makes really hot coats and jeans. Not really relevant, I know, but I'm super excited about the trench I just bought.

So yeah, nothin' much to like about Franklin Pierce, but he was hot!