A Letter from Angelica Schuyler Church on the Morning of the Hamilton-Burr Duel, July 11, 1804

Susan reporting,

You didn't really think I'd let the 214th anniversary of the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr pass unnoticed, did you? Especially since July 11, 2018 also falls on a Wednesday, just as it did in 1804. I've already written a post here about the duel itself. This one is about how, within hours of the duel, the first ripples of shock and grief are already beginning to spread through a close-knit family that would never again be the same.

There's nothing quite like an original letter from the past. The majority of surviving letters related to Alexander Hamilton, his wife Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, and her family have been transcribed and are available online on various sites. There's no doubt that this is convenient. It's much easier to read a modern transcription than to decipher the often-faded handwriting of long ago, with its dips and swirls and often-idiosyncratic spelling and punctuation. It also helps protect the originals from the wear and tear of being removed from preservation storage for repeated study.

But....

There's so much more to be learned from a handwritten letter than the words alone. Handwriting can reveal the writer's emotions, fears, and wishes, the urgency with which she or he wrote, or the care they took in choosing just the right word or phrase. I can't think of a better example than the letter above. (Please click to enlarge, and my apologies for the unavoidable reflections.)

The author of this letter was Angelica Schuyler Church, the eldest sister of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, the wife of John Barker Church, and the sister-in-law to Alexander Hamilton. Angelica was a well-read, well-traveled, and well-educated 18thc woman, and many of her surviving letters are filled with ideas and thoughts, descriptions of where she has visited and whom she has met, and, depending on her correspondent, often a dollop of flirtation as well. But not here.

Angelica wrote this letter on the morning of July 11, 1804, shortly after Alexander had been rowed back across the Hudson River from New Jersey, where the duel had taken place, to New York City. The duel with Aaron Burr had gone disastrously wrong, and had left Alexander gravely injured. But when Angelica wrote this letter to her younger brother Philip Schuyler in Albany, she had clearly just arrived at the house of Alexander's friend William Bayard, where the injured Alexander had been brought. Given the severity of his wound and the amount of blood he'd already lost, it's hard to understand her optimism for his recovery, but perhaps the attending physician was putting the best face on the situation for Angelica and her sister Eliza, who is also already at her dying husband's bedside.

Or perhaps Angelica did know. The letter was clearly written in haste and anxiety, the words dashed across the page. The two passages that she underlined - wretch Burr and expression of grief - are probably the most revealing ones in the entire letter. And because we know what happened after the letter was written, they're also among the saddest.

Here's a transcription:

                                          at Mr. Bayards Greenwich
                                          Wednesday Morn July 11, 1804

     My dear Brother, I have the painful task to inform you that General Hamilton was this morning wounded by that wretch Burr, And we have every reason to hope that he will recover. May I advise that you repair immediately to my father as perhaps he may wish to come down. My dear sister bears with saintlike fortitude this affliction. The Town is in consternation, and there exists only the expression of Grief & Indignation. Adieu my dear Brother. Remember me to Sally. Ever Yours,
                                               A. Church

This letter belongs to The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and is currently on loan and on display in the exhibition Hamilton: The Constitutional Clashes That Shaped a Nation at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, PA. The exhibition runs until December 31, 2018; see here for more information. Many thanks to Jessie Serfilippi of the Schuyler Mansion for her assistance with this post.

Read more about Eliza Schuyler and Alexander Hamilton in my latest historical novel, I, Eliza Hamilton, now available everywhere.

The More Things Change....Every Mother's (Small) Nightmare, c1835

Susan reporting,

One of the best things about the internet is how many smaller historical societies, libraries, archives, and historic sites are now able to share their collections with the world - a world that might not otherwise know they exist. Today I'm encouraging you to check out the Tumblr account of the Litchfield (CT) Historical Society. Named Fresh and Fashionable Goods, the account features all kinds of fascinating excerpts from the Elijah Boardman Papers. The Tumblr is funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, National Archives, and for us Nerdy History Folk, this is taxpayer money absolutely well spent. The finding aid to the papers is here, and the digitized material is online here.

Some of the papers in the Society's collection represent familiar names like merchant, real estate investor, and politician Benjamin Tallmadge (1754-1835), better remembered as one of General George Washington's spymasters during the American Revolution.

Most, however, are the work of lesser-known men and women. To me, these papers are the most fascinating, because they offer such a clear glimpse into everyday life: what ordinary people ate, bought, grew, and used, what amused them and what didn't.

The hastily written note shown left (and here) is a wonderful example of how some aspects of that everyday life haven't changed one bit in the last 180 or so years. Caroline Maria Boardman Schroeder (1802-1853) was born into a prominent and prosperous Litchfield County family. In 1825, she married John Frederick Schroeder (1800-1857), a celebrated cleric, scholar, reformer, author, inventor, and educator. They had eight children, and their third daughter, Cornelia, is the one mentioned in this note. While the note is undated, it's a good guess that Cornelia (1831-1914) was quite young at the time, so Caroline's note probably dates from the mid-1830s. Here's the transcription:

My dear husband
We were all ready & waited some time & when the carriage came we all fixed ourselves & set out. We had not proceeded but a few steps, when little Cornelia was suddenly seized with violent vomiting, and I found my dress completely drenched. We of course returned, but she looks so pale that I dare not take her or leave her, so have concluded to send the carriage back empty. I think she has never had a similar attack before. Mary [Cornelia's older sister] is often taken sick in this way, but Cornelia never. I think her stomach was overloaded. I will stay with her, & wish you if possible to make apologies for me whenever it is necessary. Please get some of the best calcium magnesia as I have none. 
                                     Affectionately yours, 
                                     Caroline

While today this note would be sent as a harried text between parents, the scenario it describes is all too familiar to anyone with small children. Dad has gone ahead to some special event, Mom is running a little late, but has the kids dressed in their best clothes and finally loaded into the car, and then the youngest...explodes, leaving Dad to make excuses and stop by the drug store to pick up a fresh bottle of much-needed Pepto Bismal.

Still, Caroline's concerns for little Cornelia were sadly well-founded. Caroline and John had eight children. Their first two, Caroline and George, died as newborns, while scarlet fever later claimed their middle daughter Mary, 10, and son William, only three months. Caroline's mother, Mary Ann Whiting Boardman, wrote a concerned letter to her heartbroken daughter about the sorrowful loss of little Mary and the risk of grieving too much that you can read here.

I don't have a portrait of Caroline Boardman Schroeder, but I can't resist sharing the portraits of her parents, Mary Ann Whitman Boardman, right, (with her eldest son William Whiting Boardman) and Elijah Boardman, lower left, both by Ralph Earl. They're two of my favorite portraits from the era; I'm sure that many of the readers of this blog will fondly recognize merchant Elijah's portrait, because he's posed with bolts and bolts of fabric - a dream stash of 18thc textiles.

Many thanks to Linda Hocking, Archivist, Litchfield Historical Society for her assistance with this post.

Upper left: Note from Caroline Maria Boardman Schroeder to John Frederick Schroeder, n.d., Litchfield Historical Society.
Right: Mrs. Elijah Boardman and Her Son by Ralph Earl, c1796, The Huntington.
Lower left: Elijah Boardman by Ralph Earl, 1789, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A Backward Letter from Jane Austen, 1817

Susan reporting,

Whenever I'm in New York, I always try to stop by The Morgan Library to see what treasures from their extraordinary collection have been rotated onto display. As usual, I wasn't disappointed. Among the current exhibits are a score by Mozart, a Gutenberg Bible, a proclamation from George Washington, letters from Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton (!!!), and this wonderful short letter from Jane Austen. These items and others are part of the current Treasures from the Vault exhibition, on display through March 11, 2018.

At first glance, the words appear to be beautifully written gibberish. But there's a trick to reading it: each word is spelled backward. According to the Library's placard, the letter was written by Austen to her eight-year-old niece Cassandra Esten Austen, the daughter of her brother Charles. The code is a bit challenging, but not so difficult that a clever eight-year-old (and being Jane Austen's niece, Cassandra must have been clever) couldn't decipher it. I also imagine Cassandra treasured it, too; her aunt died only six months later, leaving her final novel, Sanditon, unfinished.

I'm not providing a translation (the Library didn't either), so you can try to figure it out for yourselves. It begins "My dear Cassy I wish you a happy new year" and is signed "Your affectionate aunt Jane Austen." What lies between is up to you. Please click on the image to enlarge.

Above: Jane Austen (1775-1817) Autograph letter, written backward, to her niece Cassandra Austen, signed and dated Notwahc [Chawton], 8 January 1817, The Morgan Library. 
Below: Mr. Morgan's Library, The Morgan Library
Photos ©2018 Susan Holloway Scott

Writing Away From Home, c1780

Susan reporting,

I'm a wandering writer. I don't have a desktop computer, or even a desk, let alone an office. Perhaps because I scribbled away at my first books on legal pads on commuter trains and while waiting at kids' sports practices, I can (well, most of the time) write wherever and whenever. With a laptop computer, it's easy enough, and even if that's not with me, I always have my smartphone for notes and ideas.

It wasn't that way in 18thc America. The painting, left, is an illustration by Angelica Kauffman to one of the most popular novels of the 1780s: Emma Corbett, or, The Miseries of Civil War founded on Some Recent Circumstances which happened in America. The civil war in question was the American Revolution, and when Samuel Jackson Pratt published his novel in 1780, the "miseries" were real and current. Told in letters, the story concerns the tragedies faced by two families torn apart by the war - the first fictional work to describe both sides of the conflict.

Here one of the novel's young women, Louisa Hammond, is shown writing a letter outdoors. While this makes for an elegant illustration, it also demonstrates the challenges of writing away from home. Writing on a single sheet of paper and using her portfolio, balanced on her knee, as an impromptu desk, Louisa holds an open bottle of ink in one hand, ready to dip her feather pen repeatedly as needed. Writing with an open bottle of ink seems a perilous act in a white dress. If the faithful dog at Louisa's feet is suddenly startled, or a breeze catches her hat and startles her, then there's a good chance that ink is going to splatter across her embroidered apron.

But while Louisa Hammond is a fictitious character, real people found a way to write away from home, too. Most gentlemen who traveled frequently owned a portable desk. Basically a hinged wooden box, these desks were the predecessors of modern laptop. Designs varied to taste, but all have a surface covered in soft cloth (which made a quill pen move more easily over the page) for writing, plus compartments for storing bottles of ink, pens, paper, and other supplies. The desks folded and latched shut into a self-contained unit for carrying.

This desk belonged to Alexander Hamilton, a real-life officer (unlike Louisa Hammond's true love) in the Continental Army who did survive the American Revolution. It's currently on view at the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, VA as part of their exhibition AfterWARd: The Revolutionary Veterans Who Built America, through November 27, 2017.

In the 1780s and after the war, Hamilton worked as a lawyer, frequently traveling by horseback and carriage for various cases around the state of New York. During this time, he also served as a representative to the Continental Congress and as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, which meant more traveling between his home in New York City and, most often, Philadelphia - hundreds of miles on unpredictable roads, in good weather and bad.

Hamilton was a ferociously prolific writer, full of ideas, opinions, and arguments, and blessed with the gift for words to express them. In an era before phones, being able to communicate through letters was vital. Wherever Hamilton went, this desk usually accompanied him. Made of Spanish mahogany with brass hinges, the desk is battered and well-worn from use.

Tradition says that this was the desk on which Hamilton wrote the fifty-one essays that became his share of The Federalist Papers, and helped lead to the ratification of the Constitution. Striving to remove himself from the distractions of New York City in 1787, Hamilton and his wife Eliza traveled by packet up the Hudson River to Albany and The Pastures, the home of Eliza's family, the Schuylers. The length of the voyage was dependent on winds and currents, yet it must have given him uninterrupted days to think and write - something every writer craves.

Still, spoiled as I am by modern technology, I marvel at the idea of writing this way: drawing each letter, each word, with a quill pen in one hand and an ink bottle in the other, on a desk like this braced against your knees or a rickety ship-board bunk, and everything (including you) rocking and shifting as the packet tacked back and forth across the river....

Upper left: Louisa Hammond by Angelica Kauffman, c1780s, Fitzwilliam Museum Collection.
Right and lower left: Portable desk owned by Alexander Hamilton, American or English, late 18thc. Collection of Department of Special Collections, Burke Library, Hamilton College. Right photo courtesy of New-York Historical Society. Lower left photo ©2017 Susan Holloway Scott.

Read more about Eliza Schuyler and Alexander Hamilton in my latest historical novel, I, Eliza Hamilton, now available everywhere.

Seeing the Emotion in the Words of a Handwritten Letter, 1797

Susan reporting,

One of the most challenging aspects of writing historical fiction is trying to remove all the fusty layers of time and interpretation to capture the immediacy of the past. Whenever possible, I look to primary sources - letters, diaries, journals - that give voices to long-gone people. Seeing those original words reprinted in a book or on-line is useful, of course, but being able to see the originals of those same letters can take research - and inspiration - to an entirely different level.

Earlier this year, I was fortunate to see first-hand one of Abigail Adams' more famous (or more infamous, depending on your perspective) letters now in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Abigail was no fan of Alexander Hamilton, nor was her husband, John Adams. As young as the American republic was in1797, vitriol, name-calling, and backstabbing were already part of the political system, and there were few rivalries more bitter than the one between Hamilton and Adams. Each had many reasons, and both were right: Hamilton believed he'd been shut out of the government he'd help create during George Washington's presidency, while Adams felt that Hamilton had undermined his attempts to win a second presidential term himself. Each accused the other of unseemly ambition, and both were justified there, too.

As can be expected, Abigail supported her husband, and loathed Hamilton. The Adamses had always been frank in writing to one another about politics, and her (low) estimation of Hamilton echoed his own. The letter that she wrote in late January, 1797, begins calmly enough, with notes of the weather and the "pain and anxiety of Seperation." Then she launches into gossip she'd heard regarding Hamilton, followed by her own appraisal of his character, only to realize at the letter's end what she's written:

"Mr. Black told me the other day on his return... that Col. H[amilton] was loosing ground with his Friends in Boston. On what account I inquired. Why for the part he is said to have acted in the late Election. Aya, what was that? Why, they say that he tried to keep out both Mr. A[dams] and J[efferson], and that he behaved with great duplicity....that he might himself be the dictator. So you see according to the old adage, Murder will out. I despise a Janus....it is my firm belief that if the people had not been imposed upon by false reports and misrepresentations, the vote would have been nearly unanimous. [Hamilton] dared not risk his popularity to come out openly in opposition, but he went secretly cunningly as he thought to work....

"Beware of that spair Cassius, has always occured to me when I have seen that cock sparrow. O I have read his Heart in his wicked Eyes many a time. The very devil is in them. They are laciviousness itself, or I have no skill in Physiognomy.

"Pray burn this Letter. Dead Men tell no tales. It is really too bad to survive the Flames. I shall not dare to write so freely to you again unless you assure that you have complied with my request."

Obviously, John Adams didn't obey Abigail's request. Read as transcribed here, her words are indeed "bad," but to see them as she wrote them in the original letters showed exactly how angry she was.

Compare the delicacy of Abigail's greeting in the same letter, right, with the closing paragraphs, lower left. (As always, please click on the image to enlarge.) By the time she reached "Beware of that spair Cassius..." she was driving the pen across the page, her letters growing darker, wider, and less formed as she pressed the nib of her pen furiously across the paper. How much more powerful - and revealing - those words are in their handwritten version!

Many thanks to Sara Georgini, Historian and Series Editor, Adams Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, for showing this letter and others to me. Excerpt from letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, January 28, 1797, Massachusetts Historical Society.

Above left: Abigail Adams by Jane Stuart (after Gilbert Stuart), c1800, Adams National Historic Park.
Right & lower left: Excerpt from letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, January 28, 1797, Massachusetts Historical Society. Photo by Susan Holloway Scott.

"Taking Sides with... the Rebel Congress & the Rebel Army" in 1777

Susan reporting,

For most American teenagers today, Independence Day and the Revolution it led to aren't things to be given much thought during summer vacation from school (unless they're Hamilfans, and then they're rapping the Revolution along with the Hamilton: An American Musical soundtrack.)

But for sixteen-year-old Samuel Ring, a young Quaker living near Chadds Ford, PA in 1777, the Revolution was unavoidable. He witnessed the Battle of Brandywine first-hand, and watched the British destroy his home afterwards. His family had dared to side with the Continental Army, and had been branded as traitors. (I've written before about the Ring family, here in this post.)

The following excerpt comes from recollections that were written by Samuel's son, also named Samuel, in 1859. The letters remain with his descendants, and a copy is now in the collection of the Brandywine Battlefield Park; to the best of their knowledge, these recollections haven't been published. Although written over 80 years after the battle, the details (like eating the peaches in his family's orchard, as well as the betrayal by their neighbors) are exactly what a teenager would remember.

On the morning of September 11,1777, Samuel's father and older brother had gone to serve Washington as guides to the area, while his mother and the younger children had fled their home to avoid the coming battle, first attempting to leave by carriage, and then escaping by foot over the fields. Too young to be with the army, yet too old to be with his mother, Samuel remained near the family's house.

"[Samuel] said that he left in a hurry in the morning, on some errand, with only shirt and pantaloons on, thinking nothing of what was coming, and before his return, the road was completely blocked [by soldiers]. There was no chance of approaching very near the house, so he made for the higher ground where he could view the contending armies, out of harm's way.

"He was in a peach tree with some others, eating peaches, when the Americans gave way; he never heard such a noise, it appeared as if all the fiends of the infernal regions were let loose. He quit eating, his heart seemed to sink, he knew that the enemies of his country had triumphed.

"[His] family was scattered and part did not know where the others were. All he had was on his back, and that was almost nothing; his home was in the hands of the enemy, and liable to be laid in ashes, which, indeed, a good part soon was.

"The British occupied the ground for three days and nights....When the British retired and [Samuel] returned home, desolation was complete. He thought of changing his clothes, but a glance at the house made him think it doubtful whether there were any left there for him.

"He went upstairs to his chest - it was open, the lid broken off, and not a vestige of anything in it, and indeed not an article of clothing of any sort remained about the house. The beds [mattresses] had been ripped open, the feathers strewed over the yard (they had had about a dozen good beds) and not a sign of either beds or bedsteads [remained]. The latter had been used for fuel...and not a rail was left – all burned. Not a fowl, sheep, or hog was left on the place...the yard and fields torn up by the horse and baggage wagons and common carriages. [The British] had used a part of the house as a stable. Desolation reigned, and the work of the destroyer complete.

"[Samuel's son later] asked him if that was the way the neighborhood had been served generally, and he said it was quite different with some, their property was respected and a guard put over it, and the smallest thing left unharmed.

"[Samuel's son] asked the cause of this (being quite small and [knowing] little of such things, and [Samuel had answered] that his father favored the side of the colonies in every way, so far as his religion would permit, and many thought he went farther in his politics than he ought in taking sides with what was called the Rebel Congress and Rebel Army, and the fact of Gen. Washington having his headquarters for the time being at our house when he came to view the battlefield - and there is no doubt that had he been victorious he would have taken up his headquarters there again; all this the British general knew. There were scores in the neighborhood ready to carry news, and this was the cause of the destruction of [his father's] property. Whilst others were protected, he was pointed out as a rebel and his property given over to the enemy for destruction...."

Although the Ring farm was looted and vandalized and the contents of the house destroyed, the stone house itself survived. A restoration of the house is today part of Brandywine Battlefield Park, and is open to the public. See here for more information. A major reenactment of the battle to mark its 240th anniversary will take place this fall; see here for more information.

Many thanks to Andrew Outten for his assistance with this post.

Above: "The Nation Makers" by Howard Pyle, c1902, Brandywine River Museum of Art.