The Sad Tale of Angelica Hamilton

Every so often at the Grange, I get asked "what's your favourite story about something in this house?" I never quite know how to answer. It'd be simpler if they asked what my favourite story about Alexander Hamilton was - I have lots of answers to that one. But about the Grange itself?

Usually, I answer, "I don't know if I would call it my favourite, since it's completely depressing, but I can tell you the most interesting one..."

This is the story that I tell.


 

In the restored parlour there's a pianoforte (you can see it in the left of the photo above) which is one of the original (as in, belonging to the Hamilton family when they lived in the home) pieces still at the Grange. That pianoforte was a gift from Angelica Schuyler Church (the "Angelicaaaa!" in the musical's "Schuyler Sisters") to her niece, Alexander and Eliza's oldest daughter Angelica. Three guesses as to who Angelica Hamilton was named for.

It's a beautiful pianoforte. It was made in London, where Angelica Church lived with her husband John, and shipped to the fledgling United State. Angelica Hamilton, who was about a year younger than her older brother Philip, was said to have been very musical. The play, of course, shows Eliza teaching Philip to play the piano, but in reality, there are accounts of Angelica playing the pianoforte with her father. (Though it's very likely she could have played it with her mother as well - all five Schuyler daughters were said to be musical as well.)

As a young girl, Angelica Hamilton was described by contemporaries as being lively and charming, much like the aunt she was named for.

A painting of Angelica Schuyler Church, who sadly did not resemble Renee Elise Goldsberry

She wasn't only musical, but highly intelligent, close with her family, and clever as well. The musical likes to make a big deal of Alexander's thing for his sister-in-law, but in my opinion, his daughter was the Angelica he was most charmed by. A surviving letter he wrote to her in 1793, for example, reads rather affectionately:

"I was very glad to learn, my dear daughter, that you were going to begin the study of the French language. We hope you will in every respect behave in such a manner as will secure to you the good-will and regard of all those with whom you are. If you happen to displease any of them, be always ready to make a frank apology. But the best way is to act with so much politeness, good manners, and circumspection, as never to have occasion to make any apology. Your mother joins in best love to you. Adieu, my very dear daughter."

There are no surviving portraits of Angelica Hamilton, but I like to imagine her something like this

But alas, it was not to last. In 1801, Alexander Hamilton's oldest son Philip was shot and killed in a duel by one George Eacker.

None of the Hamiltons took it well. Alexander is said to have fainted dead away when he heard the news. Elizabeth was pregnant at the time, and friends of the family worried that the shock would harm either her or the baby. (Luckily the baby was fine - she ended up naming him Philip after his dead older brother.) And Angelica, who had been very close with her brother?

She had a complete mental breakdown.

Okay fine, have a photo from the musical.

While she did still have moments of lucidity, for the most part poor Angelica stopped recognising many family members. She rarely spoke, and when she did speak, it would be to her older brother Philip, as if he were still alive and standing right next to her. The Hamilton's did their best to take care of her. They doted on her as much as they could - Hamilton even had his friend Charles Pickney send her 4 parakeets to try and snap her out of it - but her father's death only three years later made her condition so much worse. Way to fucking go, Alex.

And that beautiful pianoforte?

According to her own nephew, son of the second Philip Hamilton, Allan McLane Hamilton?

"Her music, that her father used to oversee and encourage, stayed by her all these years. To the end she played the same old-fashioned songs and minuets upon the venerable piano that had been bought for her, many years before, in London, by Angelica Church, during her girlhood, and was sent to New York through a friend of her father."

I feel for the poor girl. Really, I do. Music became a coping mechanism, the only place she felt safe. In these songs from her childhood, Philip could still be alive. Her father Alexander could still be alive. It breaks my heart to picture her sitting there for hours plunking out a minuet, asking the thin air next to her "Philip, do you like this song?"

A minuet from the time period, if you're curious as to the type of music she may have played.

Elizabeth Hamilton, hoping that her daughter would one day recover, took care of her for as long as she could. Sadly, Angelica Hamilton never recovered. Eliza lived for 50 years after the death of her husband, and took care of her oldest daughter for as long as she could, but once she got too old to do so (Eliza was 97 when she died!) she had Angelica placed in the care of a Dr. MacDonald in Flushing, Queens.

Even then, she remained devoted to her dear daughter, as did all her other children. (The Hamiltons had 8 children altogether!!) Many of the Hamiltons still visited Angelica, even though she didn't recognise any of them. This is especially incredible when you remember that back in that time, when a family member was institutionalised for mental illness, most people just acted as if they didn't exist. It really shows how much love was in the Hamilton clan.

I hope poor Angelica had a pianoforte when she lived in Queens. If she did, it hasn't been written down anywhere.

In her will, an elderly Eliza instructed her other 6 surviving children:

"Be kind, affectionate, and attentive to my sad unfortunate daughter Angelica."

And Angelica's younger sister, also called Eliza (after her mother, of course), wrote this about her sister in the 1850s:

"Poor sister, what a happy release will be hers. Lost to herself half a century!"

In the end, Angelica Hamilton lived about two and a half years after her mother's death before she, too, died. She was 76, and still acted as if she were the 17-year-old she had been when Philip died.

I have nothing but empathy in my heart for the poor girl. I hope, if there is an afterlife, that she has been reunited with her family, that they can all listen to music together once more...

-Nym