founded in 1852, by Captain Samler, an Agent of the Darjeeling Tea Company. Samler sold the plantation to Girish Chandra Banerjee, who ran a commissary and mail services in Kurseong. It is one of the oldest tea gardens in Darjeeling. The tea factory at Makaibari was the first in the Darjeeling district, commissioned in 1859 and closed in 1933. It is one of the few tea gardens in Darjeeling owned by an Indian family. Except for brief ownership under Captain Samler, the garden has been with the Banerjee's throughout. (Bipra Das Palchoudhuri's Gayabari, Tindharia, and Mohurgang Tea Estates and Kamal Halder's Kamalpur Tea Estate have been with the family ever since the beginning and unlike other Darjeeling tea gardens it had no British connections.) Since the 1970s, Makaibari was led by the fourth-generation planter and researcher, Swaraj Kumar Banerjee