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Account of the furniture at Milton, 30 April 1770, J.M. Robbins Papers, Courtesy, Massachusetts Historical Society. Elizabeth [Murray] left the Brush-Hill estate in the fall of 1769, when she sailed for England shortly after the death of her second husband, James Smith. The house, which had belonged to her husband and had been their primary residence during the 1760s, became hers after his death. Her brother James moved into the estate after she sailed for England in the fall of 1769. This inventory does not reveal the contents of the house when Elizabeth first took up residence there after her marriage in 1760 and her husband James’s retirement in 1761. Nonetheless, it gives a sense of the goods the house would have held during her years as its mistress. Note in particular the variety of items related to cooking and dining. The 300-acre Brush-Hill estate had fruit trees, gardens, and views of the surrounding countryside. In keeping with their emulation of British fashion demonstrated in the goods inside their home, James and Elizabeth sought to replicate British style out of doors as well, seeking a British gardener who would come to Brush-Hill and oversee the gardens and train an enslaved man as an assistant. For more on the trappings of gentility in the eighteenth century, see Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992).
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Account of the furniture at Milton, 30 April 1770, J.M. Robbins Papers, Courtesy, Massachusetts Historical Society. Page 1
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