Manuscript Location

South Carolina Historical Society, Reading Room, College of Charleston, Addlestone Library

Place of Origin

United States ➔ South Carolina ➔ Charleston

Date of Composition

1847

Description

The library's Smith family papers include a recipe book compiled by Eliza Caroline Middleton Huger Smith around 1847.

Eliza Huger (1824-1919) was one of ten children born to Daniel Elliott Huger (1779-1854) and Isabella Middleton (1780-1865). Her father was an attorney and politician, who served as United States senator from South Carolina from 1843 to 1845 and was a delegate to the states-rights convention of 1852. In 1842 she married William Mason Smith (1818-1851). The couple had six children, one of whom died in the Virginia battle of Cold Harbor in 1864. Eliza Huger's background was highly privileged. In 1818, her father bought the Charleston mansion of the last royal governor of South Carolina, which has since been known as the Daniel Elliott Huger House. Eliza Huger and her siblings presumably grew up there. Her husband's father, also named William Mason Smith (1788-1838), a plantation owner, built an imposing mansion as his Charlotte townhouse in 1821, now known as the William Mason Smith House. In 1869, Eliza Huger purchased the Capers-Motte House, a Charleston mansion built in 1745, where she lived the rest of her life. In the late twentieth century the house was scrupulously restored to its eighteenth-century glory.