It Happened in Hillsborough: Maggie's Farm

Upon entering the office of Miss Margaret Smith in the great coach barn of James B. Duke's Hillsborough, New Jersey estate, the first thing you would notice is a sign hanging over her desk with the simple request, "Be Brief". Visitors would do well to take heed, for, you see, the general manager and ultimate authority at Duke's Farm is a very busy woman.

Maggie’s Farm

The child of immigrant parents, Maggie and her four sisters and two brothers moved from Easton, Pennsylvania, back to New Jersey in the mid-1880s. As a teenager, Maggie and her elder sisters Mary and Kate found work at the Raritan Woolen Mills, earning about $40 a month. After several years at the loom, Maggie decided to go to school in Newark to learn bookkeeping and accounting, and she arranged for Kate to go to cooking school and receive training in professional housekeeping. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. As the Smith girls were completing their programs, J. B. Duke was making the first purchases of the acreage that would become his New Jersey estate.

Maggie started work as an assistant to Duke’s estate manager as early as 1893. She kept at this apprenticeship for five or six years and was given the reins in 1898. She then brought sisters Mary and Kate on board.

Duke soon handed Maggie near-complete control of every operation of the estate. When he wasn't around, she had the last word - and eventually, even when he was around. The tobacco tycoon had such confidence in the Raritan mill girl that she was in charge of the cash, the books, hiring, firing, approving all requisitions - whether for a set of crockery or thousands of trees - and writing all checks on her own account.

She also supervised all of Duke's social events at "the farm". She arranged for transportation for guests, planned meals and activities, and often acted as hostess for the millionaire bachelor. For all of this, she was paid around $5,000 a year - a tenfold increase from her wages at the mill - as well as being given trips to Europe and valuable tobacco stock as Christmas gifts.

Maggie and her sisters were frugal with their wages, accumulating enough to donate generously to Catholic charities and even have a large window installed in the church in Raritan as a memorial to their mother.

In May 1907, the Daily Press of Plainfield reported that Maggie Smith had resigned from Duke Farms to take a job in New York as treasurer of one of the Duke companies, ending her time in our area. But for a few years, a mill girl from Raritan was the most powerful woman in Hillsborough, perhaps the county. In her own words, all it took was "hard work and a will to succeed." You couldn't ask for a briefer prescription than that.

###

Gregory Gillette has been writing about local history for 20 years, starting with his Courier News column “Gillette on Hillsborough” and continuing today with a Facebook page of the same name. A recipient of the Somerset County Cultural and Heritage Commission History Award for Education/Leadership in 2018, he was named as Hillsborough’s first Local Historian in 2025.