their distant cousin James Fenimore Cooper: Wayne Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper, The Later Years (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), 610.
One of the most famous of the Sauk attacks took place just five miles from William’s land: Patrick Jung, The Black Hawk War of 1832 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), 109.
William’s mining operation at Hamilton’s Diggings—quickly renamed Fort Hamilton: Tom Fey, “Lead Cannons at Fort Hamilton,” Territorial Tales (blog), accessed April 1, 2018, http://www.territorialtales.com/lead-cannons-at-fort-hamilton.html.
“Wherever they go, great numbers are sure to follow them”: “Black Hawk,” Georgia Telegraph (Macon, GA), May 8, 1833, 2, quoted in Tena Helton, “What the White ‘Squaws’ Want from Black Hawk: Gendering the Fan-Celebrity Relationship, American Indian Quarterly 34, no. 4 (Fall 2010): 498–520, 500.
“What in the devil’s name do these squaws want of me!”: Helton, “What the White ‘Squaws’ Want from Black Hawk,” 499.
“What has that man come for?”: Quoted in Lanny Davis, Scandal: How “Gotcha” Politics Is Destroying America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 258.
“many a night he wandered around the hillside”: Geoffrey Owen Cobb, “Great American Rogue, Aaron Burr’s Visits to Greenpoint,” Historic Greenpoint (blog), January 7, 2015, https://historicgreenpoint.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/great-american-rogue-aaron-burrs-visits-to-greenpoint/.
“overbearing and domineering beyond human endurance”: John E. Stillwell, The History of the Burr Portraits (privately printed pamphlet, 1928), 63.
The aggrieved wife, showing a laudable, if perverse, sense of humor: Kim Dramer, “Eliza Jumel: American Success Story, Maybe,” Huffington Post, December 6, 2017, www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-dramer-/eliza-jumel-american-success-story-maybe_b_9069018.html.
a statue of Alexander Hamilton, which Congress in 1826 had approved: Richard Peters, ed., The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America, from 1789 to March 3, 1845 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1856), 175.
Witnesses remembered heat so intense that the copper fittings from the roofs melted: Jasmin K. Williams, “The Great Fire of 1835,” New York Post, November 16, 2007, http://nypost.com/2007/11/16/the-great-fire-of-1835-3/.
“My cloak was stiff with frozen water”: Hamilton, Reminiscences, 288.
“took a letter from my dear mother to Prince Tallyrand”: Hamilton, Reminiscences, 290.
“King Jerôme [Bonaparte], who was living there, hearing my name”: Hamilton, Reminiscences, 290.
CHAPTER 20
“lying upon the counter in midday telling stories”: William MacBean, Biographical Register of Saint Andrew’s Society of the State of New York (New York: St. Andrew’s Society, 1925), 2:18–19.
As part of the tangle of his father’s unpaid pension: Chris Naylor, “Those Elusive Early Americans: Public Lands and Claims in the American State Papers, 1789–1837,” Prologue Magazine (National Archives of the United States) 37, no. 2 (Summer 2005), https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2005/summer/state-papers.html.
“gloomy from the use of coal”: Elizabeth Hamilton to Philip Hamilton, 19 March 1837, in McLane Hamilton, Intimate Life, 220.
“Adieu! . . . Write to me and let me know how Angelica is”: Elizabeth Hamilton to Philip Hamilton, 19 March 1837.
“cultured gentleman, speaking French and having his cabin shelves filled with books”: Quoted in Tom Emery, “Wisconsin’s Hamilton,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, August 29, 2015.
“I am much dissatisfied”: Elizabeth Hamilton to James A. Hamilton, 15 February 1841, Alexander Hamilton Papers Publication Project.
“I have looked for you day after day”: Elizabeth Hamilton to James A. Hamilton, 15 February 1841.
his motive was “an illegal one”: Elizabeth Hamilton to James A. Hamilton, 15 February 1841.
“very black and ragged man in the cellar who was being fed by my father”: Allan McLane Hamilton, Recollections of an Alienist, Personal and Professional (New York: George H. Doran, 1916), 16.
“work and its greatly extended good were told over”: Jessie Benton Frémont, Souvenirs of My Time (Boston: D. Lothrop and Company, 1887), 116–18.
“As she moved slowly forward supported by her daughter”: Frémont, Souvenirs of My Time, 116–18.
“Mrs. General Hamilton, upon whom I waited at table, is a very remarkable person”: James K. Polk, The Diary of James K. Polk During His Presidency, 1845–1849, ed. Milo Milton Quaife (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, and Company, 1910), 226.
“spanking black team hitched to a bright new red wagon”: Emery, “Wisconsin’s Hamilton.”
Sacramento, which he described as a “miserable hole”: Emery, “Wisconsin’s Hamilton.”
“The sunny cheerfulness of her temper and quiet humor”: Quoted in Chernow, Hamilton, 730.
“Gentlemen brought their children to see Mrs. Hamilton”: De Groot Family Papers, 1837–1965, New-York Historical Society.
“I, with Mrs. Knox and other ladies, looked from this window”: “Mrs. Alexander Hamilton Witness That George Washington Was a Communicant of the Church,” Soldier and Servant Series, no. 166 (Hartford, CT: Church Missions Publishing Company, 1932), n.p.
“James, I sat up with mother last night”: Hamilton, Reminiscences, 65.
“God bless you, you have been a good son”: Hamilton, Reminiscences, 65.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
“A thousand blessings upon you,” he wrote to her in the months after: Alexander Hamilton to Elizabeth Hamilton, 17 October 1799, Founders Online, National Archives.
“While all other passions decline in me, those of love and friendship gain”: Alexander Hamilton to Elizabeth Hamilton, 26 January [1800], Founders Online, National Archives.
As one of Alexander Hamilton’s biographers in the late 1970s observed: James Thomas Flexner, “ ‘The American World Was Not Made For Me’: The Unknown Alexander Hamilton,” American Heritage 29, no. 1 (December 1977), http://www.americanheritage.com/content/american-world-was-not-made-me.
“Many historians like to view themselves as experts”: Oliver Wolcott Jr., introductory note [July 3, 1797], Founders Online, National Archives.
Gallery Books
An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 2018 by Tilar Mazzeo
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Gallery Books hardcover edition September 2018
GALLERY BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.
Jacket design by Donna Cheng
Jacket art by Alan Dingman
Author photograph: courtesy of the author
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mazzeo, Tilar J., author.
Title: Eliza Hamilton : the extraordinary life and times of the wife of Alexander Hamilton / Tilar J. Mazzeo.
Description: New York, NY : Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., [2018] | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018008245 (print) | LCCN 2018026003 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501166327 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501166303 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Hamilton, Elizabeth Schuyler, 1757-1854. | Hamilton, Alexander, 1757-1804—Family. | Politicians’ spouses—United States—Biography.
Classification
: LCC E302.6.H22 (ebook) | LCC E302.6.H22 M29 2018 (print) | DDC 973.4092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018008245
ISBN 978-1-5011-6630-3
ISBN 978-1-5011-6632-7 (ebook)
Table of Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Family Tree
Prologue: Best of Wives, Best of Women
Chapter 1: Home on the Hudson, 1751–65
Chapter 2: Fine Frontier Ladies, 1765–74
Chapter 3: First Romances, 1775–77
Chapter 4: Angelica, 1777
Chapter 5: Hamilton, 1778–80
Chapter 6: The Winter Ball, 1780
Chapter 7: All the Girls Together—and Peggy, 1780–81
Chapter 8: Peggy, 1781–84
Chapter 9: New York, 1785–88
Chapter 10: Family Indiscretions, 1789
Chapter 11: Speculation, 1790–91
Chapter 12: The Affair, 1791–92
Chapter 13: Reprieve, 1793–95
Chapter 14: The Scandal, 1796–97
Chapter 15: A Roman Wife, 1797–1802
Chapter 16: The Duel, 1804
Chapter 17: The Widow, 1805–6
Chapter 18: Legacies, 1807–27
Chapter 19: Twilight, 1827–46
Chapter 20: Last Adventures, 1847–54
Author’s Note: Her Story
Photographs
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Notes
Copyright
Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton Page 37