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In 1797 Eliza was told of an affair that had taken place several years earlier between Hamilton andMaria Reynolds, a young woman who had first approached him for financial assistance. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. "I'm erasing myself from the narrative / let future historians wonder how Eliza reacted / when you broke her heart," she sings, referencing a very real historical ambiguity. After Vice President Aaron Burr killed Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804, Hamilton's widow, Elizabeth Schuyler "Eliza" Hamilton, had to find a way to go on without her. Along with getting Alexander's works stored while Eliza was in her 90s, she remained dedicated to charity work. Legislators approved the application and the school received some annual city funding. Eliza was, at the time, pregnant with their sixth child. Americans knew a lot about Martha Washington (George Washington's wife), a lot about Dolly Madison (James Madison's widow), and a lot about Abigail Adams (John Adams' wife). googletag.cmd = googletag.cmd || []; Long-suffering yet intensely loyal, Elizabeth Hamilton buried her sister, her eldest son, her husband, and her father in the space of three turbulent years. After the war he was active in both local and national politics, even serving as a U.S. senator from New York from 1789 to 1791 losing his seat to none other than Aaron Burr (who would eventually kill his future son-in-law Alexander in a duel). Angelica Schuyler Church died in New York City in March 1814 at the age of fifty-eight. Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton was born on August 9, 1757 in Albany, New York and died on November 9, 1854 in Washington, D.C. at the advanced age of 97. Born in August 1757, she was one of eight surviving children of Philip Schuyler and Catherine Van Rensselaer. Ron Chernow said that her efforts to preserve Hamilton's memory were important to his 2005 biography of the founder, especially as, with Hamilton's Republican foes in power after his death, there wasn't much in the way of public efforts to record his life. She made huge sacrifices to send the children to school in town and to keep them at home with her, Tilar J. Mazzeo, author of the 2019 biography Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton, explains. Life in New York City was obviously more exciting than in Morristown, New Jersey or Albany, New York. Almost none of Elizabeth's own correspondence has survived, so her personality is gleaned largely from the impressions of others. Introduced at the very start of the musical, in the song Alexander Hamilton, Elizais central to the plot, and adds an important female voice to a show about politics and Americas Founding Fathers. He had particularly fond dealings with Philip Schuyler and Elizabeth's eldest sister Angelica, a beautiful and charming woman. When he paid her a visit decades after the Reynolds scandal, she refused to speak with him. But Monroe had made copies of Hamilton's letters to Maria, and sent them to his arch-rival, Thomas Jefferson. Contrary to the musical,. Despite her advanced pregnancy and her previous miscarriage of November 1794, her initial reaction to her husband's disclosure of his past affair was to leave Hamilton in New York and join her parents in Albany where William Stephen was born on August 4, 1797. Hamilton, while envious of Andr for his actions during the war, promised Eliza he would do what he could to treat the British intelligence chief accordingly; he even begged Washington to grant Andr's last wish of execution by firing squad instead of by hanging, but to no avail. Soon after, Philip Schuyler died. The story provides a snapshot of her own life following the loss of her husband, such as her work founding an orphanage in New York, and she also sings of being with Alexander again at some point in the future (with Miranda briefly re-joining her on stage). When Eliza went away to her mother's funeral in 1803 Hamilton wrote to her from the Grange telling her: I am anxious to hear of your arrival at Albany and shall be glad to be informed that your father and all of you are composed. A noted beauty, she was a bright star on the social scene of Albany before and after her marriage. She continued to help Hamilton throughout his political career, serving as an intermediary between him and his publisher when he was writing The Federalist Papers, copying out portions of his defense of theBank of the United States,and staying up late with him so he could readWashingtons Farewell Addressout loud to her as he wrote it. [29] At the first Inaugural Ball, Eliza danced with George Washington;[30] when Thomas Jefferson returned from Paris in 1790, she and Alexander hosted a dinner for him. Sign up for the American Experience newsletter! Take this quiz about the debate over the Constitution. Elizabeth and Alexander Hamilton had eight children: The Hamiltons also raised Frances (Fanny) Antill, an orphan who lived with them for ten years beginning in 1787 when she was 2 years old. After public schools finally were built nearby, the Hamilton Free Schools trustees converted it into the neighborhoods first lending library, and it later evolved into the Dyckman Institute, an educational advocacy group. Two years later on July 12, 1804, Hamilton died during a duel with Aaron Burr. They were so close, in . After two more months of separation punctuated by their correspondence, on December 14, 1780, Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler were married at the Schuyler Mansion. In a joking letter to a fellow aide he sounded more dispassionate: "Though not a genius, she has good sense enough to be agreeable, and though not a beauty, she has fine black eyes, is rather handsome, and has every other requisite of the exterior to make a lover happy. She loves owls, hates cilantro, and can find the queer subtext in literally anything. But Eliza, understandably, is devastated, and responds by burning all the letters that Hamilton has ever sent her. [20] There Eliza busied herself in creating a home for them and in aiding Alexander with his political writingsparts of his 31-page letter to Robert Morris, laying out much of the financial knowledge that was to aid him later in his career, are in her handwriting. ", At 22, Eliza met Alexander Hamilton, who was at the time serving under General George Washington, and fell in love "at first sight," per historical accounts. Eliza died in Washington, D.C. on November 9, 1854, at age 97. She also appears in the 2015 Broadway Musical Hamilton, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Portrayed by Phillipa Soo, Eliza played a key role in safeguarding her husband's legacy after his death. Still eager to find glory in battle, he turned them all down. On September 25, 1784, Eliza gave birth to her second child, Angelica, named after Eliza's older sister. In the early months of the war, he formed an artillery company and later served at the battles of White Plains, Trenton and Princeton. Unlike two of Elizas sisters (including Angelica) who had eloped due to family doubts about their husbands, Eliza received her fathers blessing. Eliza descended from some of America's most prominent early families Born in August 1757, she was one of eight surviving children of Philip Schuyler and Catherine Van Rensselaer. [8] The relationship between Eliza and Hamilton quickly grew; even after he left Morristown for a short mission to negotiate a prisoners exchange, only a month after Eliza had arrived. As the New York Herald reported in 1856, the one-room school was antiquated and so dilapidated that it was unfit for use, though it still had a student body of 60 to 70 children. She recruited biographers to do a proper work on her husband (the task eventually fell to a son), hired assistants to organize his papers, even wore a little bag around her neck with pieces of a sonnet he had composed for her in 1780. The accomplishment she's proudest of, she says in the song, is founding the first private orphanage in New York City, inspired by Hamilton's own experience of being orphaned at a young age. Eliza was giving much of her time to her other big projecthelping to found the citys first private orphanage in lower Manhattan. By focusing on children, Eliza found connection to her late husbands legacy. Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. For the first time since its debut in 2015, Lin Manuel Miranda's groundbreaking Broadway hit Hamilton is available to watch from the comfort of your own couch, courtesy of Disney+. In one letter Angelica told Elizabeth that she loved Hamilton "very much and, if you were as generous as the old Romans, you would lend him to me for a little while." READ MORE: What Was Alexander Hamilton's Role in Aaron Burr's Contentious Presidential Defeat? [49][50][51] Eliza was appointed second directress, or vice-president. In the year before the duel, Eliza's mother Catherine had died suddenly,[47] and only a few months after Hamilton's death Eliza's father died as well. In 1806, Isabella Graham and Sarah Hoffman, two other widows and social activists with whom Eliza had become friends, approached her for help. She also became a founder of the Orphan Asylum Society, the citys first private orphanage, which built a Greenwich Village facility that provided a home for hundreds of children. Her reaction to Hamilton's affair is, equally, lost to history, which Miranda imagines as deliberate in the lyrics to "Burn." Eliza did not leave the orphanage until 1848, twenty-seven years later, when she left to live with her daughter, Elizabeth . [citation needed], In 1798, Eliza had accepted her friend Isabella Graham's invitation to join the descriptively named Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children that had been established the previous year. Here's what happened to Angelica in real life, and how she ended up back together with Hamilton under sad circumstances. After being shot on the dueling field, Philip was brought to Angelica and John Church's house, where he died with both of his parents next to him. In 1806, two years after her husbands death, she, along with several other women, founded the Orphan Asylum Society. Flitner recalled that the school provided students with textbooks, and that they studied arithmetic by doing calculations on slates. And I am grateful . The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1881. Here's what you need to know about the real-life founding mother. Peggy Schuyler was born in Albany, New York on September 19, 1758, the third daughter of Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler (1734-1803) and Philip Schuyler (1733-1804), a wealthy patroon and major general in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. After Vice President Aaron Burr killed Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804, Hamiltons widow, Elizabeth Schuyler Eliza Hamilton, had to find a way to go on without her beloved husband. [26] At this time, she now had three young children (her third, Alexander, was born in May 1786) and may have been pregnant at the time with her fourth, James Alexander, who would be born the following April. In real life, two years after Hamilton's death, Eliza really did help to establish the Orphan Asylum Society of the City of New York, which still exists today as a family services agency named Graham Windham. On November 24, 1801, she lost her son Philip, who died fighting a duel with a political opponent of his father. In November 1804, Gen. Philip Schuyler died, leaving Elizabeth Hamilton without both of her parents. [12] She was said to have been something of a tomboy when she was young;[13][pageneeded] throughout her life she retained a strong will and even an impulsiveness that her acquaintances noted. In 1772, after writing a powerful essay describing the devastation inflicted on Nevis by a recent hurricane, a group of local businessmen took up a collection to send young Hamilton to America to continue his education. Along with giving birth to and raising eight children, she helped Hamilton write speeches and listened to early drafts of Washington's "Farewell Address" and excerpts from the Federalist Papers. Elizabeth Hamiltons parents were the noted American Revolutionary war general, Philip Schuyler and Catherine Van Rensselaer of the Manor of Van Renselaerswyck. Elizabeth Schuyler was born on August 9, 1757, the daughter of the Revolutionary War leader Major General Philip Schuyler. This may have coincided with the discovery that she was pregnant with her first child, who would be born the next January and named Philip, for her father. Some parts of his 31-page letter to Robert Morris, laying out much of the financial knowledge that was to aid him later in his career, are actually in her handwriting. Where Is The Cast Of Broadway's 'Hamilton' Now? They had met briefly a few years before, but now Alexander Hamilton was smitten, "a gone man," in the words of another aide. Also known as Eliza or Betsy, she was from a prominent Dutch family in Albany, New York. document.documentElement.className += 'js'; She also outlived her fifth child, her son William Stephen who was born on August 4, 1797 and died on October 9, 1850. [19] Soon, however, Washington and Hamilton had a falling-out, and the newlywed couple moved, first back to Eliza's father's house in Albany, then to a new home across the river from the New Windsor headquarters. In Hamilton's closing number, "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story," Eliza is framed as the driving force behind Hamilton's legacy. According to documents unearthed in the early 1900s by the New-York Historical Society, Eliza started out by finding a small house near Fort Washington, the Revolutionary War fort that was located at the intersection of present-day Fort Washington Avenue and W. 183rd Street, to be repurposed as a schoolhouse. Elizabeth, Angelica and Margarita Schuyler are the three famous sisters portrayed in the Broadway Play Hamilton. [citation needed], In addition to their own children, in 1787, Eliza and Alexander took into their home Frances (Fanny) Antill, the two-year-old youngest child of Hamilton's friend Colonel Edward Antill, whose wife had recently died. [citation needed]. Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton (1757-1854) was a philanthropist, wife to Alexander Hamilton, and mother of their 8 children. Eliza would have grown up around slavery as her father was a slave owner. Elizabeth did not spend her days in sorrow or self-pity. According to the Smithsonian Magazine, Eliza was a beloved figure and entertained often: "Some visitors sought her imprimatur for new legislation, while others went simply to bask in the glow of history." Eliza evidently did not believe the charges when they were first leveled against her husband: John Church, her brother-in-law, on July 13, 1797, wrote to Hamilton that "it makes not the least Impression on her, only that she considers the whole Knot of those opposed to you to be [Scoundrels]. Her eldest son Philip died that November in a reckless duel, and Hamilton himself followedfewer than three years later. [4] She had seven siblings who lived to adulthood, including Angelica Schuyler Church and Margarita "Peggy" Schuyler Van Rensselaer, but she had 14 siblings altogether. The Schuylers owned enslaved people and Philip was reportedly "the largest owner of enslaved people in Albany during his time. Elizabeth also appeared in the 1986 TV series, George Washington II: The Forging of a Nation. In 1787, Eliza sat for a portrait, executed by the painter Ralph Earl while he was being held in debtors' prison. Elizabeth was born in Albany, New York, the second daughter of Continental Army General Philip Schuyler, a Revolutionary War general, and Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler. By early 1777, hed made enough of a name for himself that several Colonial generals asked him to join their staffs. [52] By the time she left she had been with the organization continuously since its founding, a total of 42 years. She re-organized all of Alexander's letters, papers, and writings with the help of her son, John Church Hamilton, and persevered through many setbacks in getting his biography published. He was stationed along with Washington in Morristown for the winter. Theirs would be a loving marriage, though not without heartbreak and pain. When he paid her a visit decades after the Reynolds scandal, she refused to speak with him. Her eighth and last child, Philip (Little Phil), was born on June 1, 1802. She had outlived all of her siblings except one who was 24 years her junior. Elizabeth was then only 47 years old. That 'Hamilton' Boycott Completely Backfired, may focus on its namesake founding father, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. Elizabeth Hamilton petitioned Congress to publish her husband Alexander Hamilton's writings (1846). Hamilton attended Kings College, now Columbia University, and dived headfirst into the political debate and heady atmosphere that was pre-war New York City. Elizabeth Hamilton died on November 9, 1854, at the age of 97. Eliza was a source of valuable advice and wisdom to Hamilton as his political career began to take off after the war. Eliza was buried near her husband in the graveyard of Trinity Church in New York City. In March 1818, the group petitioned the New York State Legislature to incorporate a free school, and asked for $400 to build a new school building. WATCH: Hamilton: Building America on HISTORY Vault. Angelica lived abroad for over fourteen years, returning to America for visits in 1785 and 1789. The two families were two of the wealthiest families of that time and it is safe to say that Dutch was probably still their main language in everyday life. Her fathers blessing was surprising because two of her sisters, Angelica and Margarita, would end up eloping because their father refused their desire to marry the men of their respective choices. In 1806, two years after Hamiltons death, Elizabeth became the co-founder of the Society for the relief of poor widows with small children. Alexander and Elizabeth (he called her Eliza or Betsey) were married at the Schuyler home on December 14 of that same year, and Hamilton was warmly received into the family. More. As a child, she was strong-willed and impulsive. She also met and became friends with Martha Washington, a friendship they would maintain throughout their husbands political careers.