Biography of eliza hamilton

After Vice President Aaron Burr fasten Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton sully a duel in 1804, Hamilton’s widow, Elizabeth Schuyler “Eliza” Metropolis, had to find a express to go on without safe beloved husband. One of say publicly ways she found solace—and esteemed his memory—was to found four institutions in New York depart supported lower-income children.

The Hamilton Unproblematic School, established in northern Borough (not far from where say publicly couple had lived) offered bringing-up to students of families who couldn’t afford private education intolerant their children. She also became a founder of the Waif Asylum Society, the city’s chief private orphanage, which built wonderful Greenwich Village facility that assuming a home for hundreds hold sway over children.

By focusing on family tree, Eliza found connection to smear late husband’s legacy. Hamilton grew up as an orphan immigrant the Caribbean and was closetogether to come to America progress to study when benefactors paid sovereign way.

Eliza Forced to Move Downtown Following Hamilton's Death

After her husband’s death, Eliza Hamilton remained cherish a time in The Plantation, the clapboard two-and-a-half-story home placed on what is now Vulnerable. 143rd Street just east apparent Amsterdam Avenue in Harlem, ring she was surrounded by gardens filled with tulips, hyacinths, lilies and roses, according to archivist Jonathan Gill. But at integrity time of Hamilton’s death, closure still had a mortgage stomach owed money to the builders, and his wife struggled spoils the weight of all stroll debt.

The following year, tidy group of her husband’s deep-pocketed friends bought the house extract property from Eliza for $30,500 and promptly sold it plod to her for $15,000, tolerable that she would have poorly off to take care of being and her family. Even like so, according to Gill, Eliza someday became unable to afford interpretation estate’s upkeep, and in 1813, she was forced to trade be in the busines it and move to humbler quarters downtown.

Despite the move, Eliza retained a connection to grouping who lived a few miles away from her old sunny. In those days, the still-isolated area didn’t have any at liberty public schools, and paying education at a private academy was too much for parents progress to afford, according to Don Swift, president of the Dyckman Steading Museum Alliance, a community origination that has helped to take care of the history of the place.

Eliza, who had to strain to pay for her splinter group children’s education after her husband’s death, could empathize. She “made huge sacrifices to send illustriousness children to school in metropolis and to keep them bonus home with her,” Tilar Document. Mazzeo, author of the 2019 biographyEliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Ethos and Times of the Mate of Alexander Hamilton,explains.

“Eliza Noblewoman wanted to find a plan to honor Hamilton's memory, reliably the place where their surname home had been together,” says Mazzeo.

Eliza was also driven from end to end of her faith. As biographer Daffo Chernow has written, the deep down religious widow also “believed ardently that all children should skin literate in order to read the Bible.”

Hamilton Free School Legitimate in Northern Manhattan

According to paper unearthed in the early Nineteen by the New-York Historical Country, Eliza started out by verdict a small house near Lesion Washington, the Revolutionary War enclose that was located at authority intersection of present-day Fort General Avenue and W. 183rd Structure, to be repurposed as great schoolhouse. But the number work for students quickly grew, that temporary setup wasn’t adequate.

The woman couldn’t afford a bigger stiffen, but a group of wealthier women in the area marked to help. In March 1818, the group petitioned the In mint condition York State Legislature to include a free school, and deliberately for $400 to build ingenious new school building. Legislators rectify the application and the nursery school received some annual city grant.

Eliza Hamilton and her benefactors moved quickly, and by representation end of May, they’d by this time built a one-room, 1,050-square-foot edifice with a slanted roof—big adequate for 40 to 60 students—around what is now Broadway in the middle of W. 187th and W. 189th streets.

On the Hamilton Make known School’s shoestring budget, it could afford just one teacher, who also doubled as the school’s janitor, according to the journal of William Herbert Flitner, who attended the school in integrity 1840s. “All of the scholars came from the locality in the middle of High Bridge and Kingsbridge,” sharptasting recalled many years later.

Flitner recalled that the school undersupplied students with textbooks, and ditch they studied arithmetic by familiarity calculations on slates. Spelling was taught from Webster’s Elementary Orthography Book, a popular text believe the time.

It’s unlikely that Eliza was involved on a banal basis, according to Mazzeo. Regardless, “We know that Mrs. City did regularly visit the grammar and give out awards turning prize days, so she remained involved with the school's medial mission and with celebrating close-fitting achievements.”

Eliza was giving much representative her time to her pristine big project—helping to found significance city’s first private orphanage funny story lower Manhattan.

Orphan Asylum Theatre group Rises in Downtown Manhattan

In 1806, Isabella Graham and Sarah Hoffman, figure other widows and social activists with whom Eliza had answer friends, approached her for relieve. According to Mazzeo, Hoffman confidential discovered five children weeping duck the body of their late mother in a slum spiritless, which led them to catch on the need for an institution in the city. 

Eliza and birth other women arranged to inconsiderate a small two-story house extent Raisin Street in Greenwich resident and hired a married yoke to care for the leafy residents. In March of renounce year, they formally founded rendering Orphan Asylum Society, and recruited other women to the post.

In the first year, nobleness society took in 20 lineage but had to turn weight nine times as many, according to Mazzeo. Eliza and grandeur other activists soon set snap off to raise $25,000 to construct a bigger facility on calligraphic donated parcel on Bank Classification in Greenwich Village. Eliza alone went out and solicited alms-giving, and with the help several $10,000 provided by state legislators, the cornerstone was laid collaboration a three-story orphanage in July 1807.

When Eliza Hamilton petit mal in November 1854 at extension 97, the uptown school was still in existence, but produce clearly had seen better period. As the New York Herald reported in 1856, the one-room school was antiquated and positive dilapidated that it was “unfit for use,” though it come to light had a student body pick up the check 60 to 70 children.

The following year, according to option newspaper account in theNew Dynasty Tribune, the school building was destroyed in a fire. Subsequently public schools finally were determined nearby, the Hamilton Free School’s trustees converted it into honourableness neighborhood’s first lending library, distinguished it later evolved into picture Dyckman Institute, an educational entreaty group. Eventually, Eliza Hamilton’s institute evolved into a scholarship cache that helps students from General Heights and Inwood attend University University.

The Orphan Asylum Companionship, meanwhile, evolved into Graham Windham, a private nonprofit social employ agency that provides parenting assist and mental and behavioral disorder treatment for 5,000 children pole families each year. It as well operates a school for at-risk youth.

As Mazzeo notes, Eliza “was simply passionate about apprentice welfare, and where she apophthegm problems she tried to hit upon solutions.”

Patrick J. Kiger has written champion GQ, the Los Angeles Multiplication, National Geographic, PBS NewsHour opinion Military History Quarterly. He's significance co-author (with Martin J. Smith) of Poplorica:A Popular History indifference the Fads, Mavericks, Inventions, explode Lore that Shaped Modern America.

Citation Information

Article Title

How Alexander Hamilton’s Woman, Eliza, Carried on His Legacy

Author

Patrick J. Kiger

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

September 7, 2023

Original Published Date

June 30, 2020