This New York City made Tea Service is thought to be a wedding gift for New Orleanian Charles Harrod and his second wife, Mary Morgan, based on the sugar bowl's interior inscription: “1832 Charles Harrod New Orleans.” Charles and Mary's son, Benjamin Morgan Harrod (1837–1912), became a well known civil engineer who directed the 1902 construction of the New Orleans sewerage and water systems and was the consulting engineer for building the Delgado Museum of Art (NOMA) in 1910.

Benjamin Harrod's wife Eugenia Uhlhorn Harrod donated the teapot and waste bowl to the museum in 1914, but the full set was only reunited in 1986 when the sugar bowl became available at a local auction.