The Hart tea service, engraved with the monogram “E.E.H.,” was a gift from the Rothschild family to Esther Eudora Ezekiel and Samuel Hart upon their marriage in New York on March 27, 1833. Esther was born in Kingston, Jamaica, as were her mother and her mother’s father. Samuel, son of Daniel and Bella Hart, ran a bookstore in Charleston and in 1845 published The Charleston Book, a collection edited by William Gilmore Simms, the antebellum South’s most prolific writer. Contributors included Jewish authors Isaac Harby, Lewis C. Levin, and Penina Moïse. Hart, a religious traditionalist, was among the seceders from Beth Elohim who opposed reform.