TDOH: Alexander and Eliza

Note: This is Day Eight of Ten Days of Hamilton. Primer is here.

We’ve spoken ad nauseam about the various men in Alexander Hamilton’s life: political enemies, his mentor, and (coming tomorrow) the man who murdered him. Those men helped shape Alexander Hamilton into the person that he was politically, and Hamilton may have latched onto these men because he was abandoned by his father at a young age. But losing his mother at an early age may have also pushed him to strong women in his life, which is evidenced by his marriage to Elizabeth Schuyler.

Elizabeth Schuyler was the second daughter of Philip Schuyler, a general in the Revolutionary War and one of the first senators from New York, and Catherine Van Rensselaer, who was from one of the richest and politically influential families of Colonial New York. This upbringing afforded Eliza and her siblings luxury, but she was much more than just a young women looking to marry well in an era where that was to be expected, and she was nearly an equal partner in her marriage with Alexander Hamilton, whom she met during a brief respite from the War. Continue reading “TDOH: Alexander and Eliza” →

TDOH: Alexander Hamilton, Part 2

Note: This is a re-blog of something I wrote previously. Please see this post for what I am doing this month.

As I work my way through the biography of Alexander Hamilton (hopefully in advance of seeing Hamilton: An American Musical when it makes its stop in Salt Lake), I’ll be writing some thoughts about the book, or just thoughts about Hamilton in general. They won’t always be a direct critique of the book, but we’ll see what happens.

Alexander Hamilton wrote a lot. Three-quarters of the Federalist Papers. A report on public credit and the national bank. A pamphlet about an affair in an attempt to clear the air. Biographer Ron Chernow noted that Hamilton “must have produced the maximum number of words that a human can scratch out in 49 years.” If there were notes to be taken or thoughts about something, It was almost a guarantee that he wrote it down.

This was evidenced by his courtship of Elizabeth Schuyler. Granted, at the time, it wasn’t as if he could spend hours upon hours on the phone speaking with his future wife. For one, the telephone wasn’t yet invented; second, he was mostly away with the Army fighting the Revolutionary War as George Washington’s aide, so he didn’t really have a bunch of free time. Nevertheless, he wooed the young Eliza with his words on paper, sending her a letter nearly every day he was away (we know this because he chastised her for not keeping up with his prolific pace of letter writing). Continue reading “TDOH: Alexander Hamilton, Part 2” →

Alexander Hamilton, Part 2

Some Big News

With less than two weeks to go until I am done with school forever,* there are a few things about my short-to-intermediate future that I am ready to announce here.

*I reserve the right to return to school at a later date, but only as an instructor or administrator.

First, as you may know from my previous posts on the subject, I am currently looking for a job in Salt Lake City. While I wish this was an announcement of me or Kim finding a full-time position which would hasten our departure from Illinois, it is sadly not the case. Despite my efforts to the contrary, I have been unable to locate a suitable position. Part of the reason it seems is that I live in Illinois and people don’t want to interview me and are instead focusing on local folks first. If that’s the case, then I guess I should just move my happy self to Utah already and get on with it…which is what will be happening. though not for a while.

Continue reading “Some Big News” →