Benjamin Huger (1768-1823) of Georgetown, SC … ordered “eighteen maple chairs with cushions, neat and fashionable but without gilding and two sofas d[itt]o to answer the above” from New York suppliers.
Benjamin’s great-nephew and namesake, Benjamin Huger Read (1823-1887), and his wife Mary Julia Middleton Read (1828-1904) owned this couch in Charleston, South Carolina.
Benjamin H Read was a 40 year old Captain and Assistant Adjutant General to Brigadier General Roswell Ripley on the Maryland Campaign of September 1862 and
rendered, throughout the operations, valuable and efficient service. Captain Read remained on the field [at Sharpsburg on 17 September] after I [Ripley] had been disabled.
He served with the general to at least October 1864.
He was from a line of wealthy planters who had come to America well before the Revolution, and he inherited one of the family’s many estates – Rice Hope Plantation (Daniel Huger, 1696) – shortly before the Civil War, producing rice with more than 100 slaves on something like 2000 acres on the Cooper River near Charleston, SC by 1860.
Although no longer employing slaves after the war, he continued to farm his large holdings to at least 1875, when he sold the estate.
Life had been good for Benjamin Huger Read.
Notes
That fabulous couch is in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg (CW) in Virginia, and was recently restored by the CW Conservation Department staff. It was due to be on display at the Art Museums there.
More about Rice Hope is online from South Carolina Plantations/SCIWAY.
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