Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton

Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton

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A woman of great strength, modesty, and honor. This is the Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton (also known as “Eliza” or “Betsey”) who emerges from the historical record – a record from which Eliza herself, for reasons we will never know, tried to erase herself when she destroyed the letters she had written to Alexander Hamilton, her husband. But thanks to Alexander’s letters to her and other documents, we can see the resilient, compassionate, impressive individual Eliza Schuyler Hamilton was.

“Dark-haired, serious, with intense, lovely eyes,”[i] Eliza was born in 1757, into the wealthy and powerful Schuyler family.[ii] She was born amidst the “hardship and chaos” of the Seven Years War, whose battles were sometimes fought close to the Schuyler estate in the Saratoga/Albany area.[iii] Philip Schuyler fought for the British in that war. Years later he used his military skill against the British, serving as a general for the Continental Army and making friends with men like George Washington.[iv] From her childhood and into adolescence, Eliza lived amid events that played a key role in the formation of this country. From a young age she was knowledgeable about current events and “avidly interested in the world around her.”[v]

Like most upper-class young women of her day, Eliza learned music, French, dancing, sewing, and social graces. She was tutored in writing, penmanship, and basic math, and regularly read the Bible and Shakespeare.[vi] Yet Eliza, a girl “utterly devoid of conceit,” disliked many of these activities. For her, happiness was summertime on horseback in the country, spending time outdoors, and learning how to build and manage an agricultural estate, skills at which she proved very capable.[vii]

By her early 20s, the “athletic, charming, sincere” [viii] Eliza was, in the words of some of her admirers, a young woman who exuded “good temper and benevolence,”[ix] with a “strong character . . . glowing underneath. . . [and] bursting through at times.”[x] In 1779, Philip sent Eliza, by then age 22, to stay with an aunt in Morristown, NJ, where the Continental army – with its many eligible bachelor officers -- was in winter camp.[xi] Here, in February 1780, she met Alexander Hamilton, who was “instantly smitten” with Eliza, and by March of that year, the two had decided to get married.[xii] Eliza fell in love with Alexander’s intelligence, but “more with his kindly nature.” She loved “one of his favorite sayings: ‘My dear Eliza . . . I have a good head, but thank God he has given me a good heart.’”[xiii] Their wedding took place at the Schuyler estate on December 14, 1780. It was the start of a nearly 24-year marriage during which Eliza would be Alexander’s “anchor,” “lending a strong home foundation to his turbulent life.”[xiv] She “ran the household,” and was a “strict but loving mother.”[xv] She cherished being with her eight children, teaching them their letters, and having them read the Bible or history books to her.[xvi] She also opened her home to other children, including the orphaned Fanny Antill, who the Hamiltons raised for 10 years, and two nephews who spent many weekends with aunt Eliza later in life.[xvii]

Whether as a young military wife who was afraid for her husband’s safety, or as wife to a gifted, ambitious and, at times, unpopular public figure, Eliza showed tremendous inner strength. Always practical and graceful, she overcame her dislike of her role as society lady.[xviii] She never complained about the demands of running the Hamiltons’ household. These demands were great, given Alexander’s many long absences from home due to his work.[xix] And when Alexander’s ideas or character were attacked by his political enemies, Eliza always defended him. She considered accusations against him to be lies, she called his accusers “scoundrels,” and she viewed his enemies as her own.[xx]

When, in 1797, Alexander decided to buy the land where the Grange is now located, he wrote excitedly to Eliza of his “sweet project, of which I will make you my confidant.”[xxi] In 1800, when Eliza was pregnant with their seventh child, she and the other children moved into a small farmhouse on the property while the Grange was built.[xxii] When Alexander was busy with his law practice in NYC, Eliza “oversaw much of the day-to-day development” of the Grange and “kept close tabs” on the money being spent to build it.[xxiii]

Eliza grieved deeply after Alexander’s July 1804 death following the duel with Aaron Burr.[xxiv] Yet her years as a widow – an incredible 50-year-long period -- only proved her “towering strength and integrity.”[xxv] She worked tirelessly to conserve Alexander’s legacy by tracking down, collecting, and organizing his papers and correspondence, and by interviewing politicians and other people who had worked with him.[xxvi] She dedicated herself to “serving widows, orphans, and poor children” and, in 1806, co-founded the NY Orphan Asylum Society, NY’s first private orphanage, which educated poor and orphaned children and placed them in apprenticeships or jobs. Eliza became the Society’s director in 1821, and held that position for 27 years. She raised money and leased property for the Society, and took responsibility for the 158 children in the asylum’s care.[xxvii] Her commitment to educating poor children led her to open the first public school in Washington Heights, the Hamilton Free School, for which she raised money and donated land.[xxviii] In 1837 – by now age 80 -- she headed west, by steamboat, to visit her son William in Wisconsin, and made many stops during the five-month journey.[xxix] One fellow traveler described her as a “lively old lady,” whose “spirit and vivacity” he greatly admired.[xxx] In 1848, she moved to Washington, DC to live with her widowed daughter, Elizabeth Holley, and their home welcomed a “stream of visitors,” who came to see Eliza, who was “a living piece of American history.”[xxxi] Visitors included President Millard Fillmore, who invited Eliza to the White House.[xxxii] In her 90s, Eliza and her friend Dolley Madison raised money to build the Washington Monument.[xxxiii] When she reached “the great age of ninety-five,” a friend described how she had “retain[ed] in an astonishing degree her faculties,” and how she could still have conversations “with much of that ease and brilliancy which lent so peculiar a charm to her younger days.”[xxxiv] She died on November 9, 1854, with some of her children around her. She is buried in Trinity Church yard, next to her beloved Alexander.[xxxv]
-Ina Bort

Bibliography

Brookhiser, Richard. Alexander Hamilton: American (The Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 1999).

Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton (Penguin Books, 2004).

Hamilton, Allan McLane. The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton (Duckworth & Co., 1910).

Mazzeo, Tiler J. Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster, 2018).

Mazzeo, Tiler J. “Eliza Hamilton’s Excellent Five-Month Steamboat Ride from New York to Wisconsin,” August 1, 2019 (available at www.zocalopublicsquare.org).

Porwancher, Andrew. The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton (Princeton Univ. Press, 2022).Sylla, Richard.

Hamilton (Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. 2016).

Notes
[i] Brookhiser, Richard. Alexander Hamilton: American (The Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 1999) (hereinafter, “Brookhiser”), 46.
[ii] Brookhiser at 46; Porwancher, Andrew. The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton (Princeton Univ. Press, 2022), 61.
[iii]Mazzeo, Tiler J. Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster, 2018) (hereinafter, “Mazzeo”), 5.
[iv] Mazzeo 29.
[v] Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton (Penguin Books, 2004)(hereinafter, “Chernow”), 131.
[vi] Mazzeo 12-14, 16-17, 19-20.
[vii] Chernow at 130; Mazzeo 21-24.
[viii] Chernow 130-31.
[ix] Hamilton, Allan McLane. The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton (Duckworth & Co., 1910) (hereinafter, “McLane Hamilton”), 95.
[x] Brookhiser 47.
[xi] Mazzeo 61.
[xii] Chernow 129.
[xiii] Chernow 132.
[xiv] Mazzeo 86-88; Chernow 554, 130.
[xv] Chernow 204, 205, 336.
[xvi] Mazzeo 121; Chernow 205.
[xvii] Chernow 203, 248; Mazzeo 215.
[xviii] Mazzeo 148-49; Chernow 335-36.
[xix] Sylla, Richard. Hamilton (Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. 2016) 144-45; Mazzeo 93, 103, 106-08, 140-42, 170.
[xx] Brookhiser 154; Mazzeo at 194-95, 202; Chernow at 205.
[xxi] Mazzeo 207.
[xxii] Mazzeo 212.
[xxiii] Chernow 643.
[xxiv] Mazzeo 235.
[xxv] Chernow 728.
[xxvi] Chernow 727; Mazzeo 254-55, 259-61.
[xxvii] Chernow 728-29; Mazzeo at 250-52.
[xxviii] Mazzeo 266.
[xxix] Mazzeo 278-80.
[xxx] Mazzeo, Tiler J. “Eliza Hamilton’s Excellent Five-Month Steamboat Ride from New York to Wisconsin,” August 1, 2019 (available at www.zocalopublicsquare.org).
[xxxi] Chernow 730.
[xxxii] Id.
[xxxiii] Mazzeo 284-85.
[xxxiv] McLane Hamilto 115.
[xxxv] Mazzeo 288-89.