The Forgotten Hamilton

It's pretty common knowledge that Alexander Hamilton, despite all of his numerous accomplishments, considered his large family one of his most important legacies of all. He considered himself a family man and, fittingly, had an absolute army of children. There were 8 biological children in all, though the oldest and the youngest never got to meet one another:

1. Philip (born 1782)
2. Angelica (1784)
3. Alexander Jr. (1786)
4. James Alexander (1788)
5. John Church (1792)
6. William Stephen (1797)
7. Eliza (1799)
8. Philip (1802)

Now, it seems that the further we go down this list of children, the less people know about them. Everyone has heard of the first Philip, of course - he's the one who died in a duel. Angelica got her own entry on this blog, and even Alexander Jr. sometimes gets remembered for the fun piece of trivia that he represented Eliza Jumel as her divorce lawyer when she divorced Aaron Burr.  Some people know the name of child #5, John Church Hamilton (named not after John Laurens, but after Angelica Schuyler Church's husband) as the man who wrote the first biography of Alexander Hamilton, and who commissioned what a friend of mine calls "the weirdly sexy Hamilton statue in Central Park".

But what about child #8, Philip the second? It seems people only remember him as a footnote - even my tours at the Grange only mention him as the baby named after the son who died in a duel. But the guy did lead a life beyond just being a baby. 

This is what he looked like as an adult

So let's learn a little bit about Philip Hamilton number two - or, as his family called him, "Little Phil".

Little Phil Hamilton was born in June 1802, on either the 1st or the 2nd. (His obituary and tombstone both say the 1st; his son said the 2nd. I'm more inclined to believe the 1st was the correct birth date.) Though his family called him Little Phil, as he was named after his dead older brother, he actually grew to be over 6 feet tall, so was probably the tallest Hamilton child. His father died when he was barely 2 years old.

His son Allan McLane Hamilton (who was a pretty cool guy in his own right, founding the New York Psychiatrical Society) later said of his father, "[Philip] manifested much of his father's sweetness and happy disposition, and was always notably considerate of the feelings of others, and was punctilious to a fault in his obligations."

However, his father had gone into debt having the Grange built, and that house was finished the same year Little Phil was born. Of course, one would assume Alexander Hamilton, financial genius that he was, absolutely had a plan to pay off his debts. But seeing that he died only two years later, the man never had the chance, and the once-wealthy Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton was left with seven living children and very little money. 

Allan McLane Hamilton also wrote how this financial situation affected his father: Phil "was denied those advantages accorded to his elder brothers, and had... to make his own way."

But Phil was a Hamilton, damn it. Make his own way he did - just like 2 of his 4 surviving older brothers, he went into law, serving as an assistant attorney in the 1830s under older brother James Alexander. He was a prosecuting lawyer in the 1831 trial of pirate Charles Gibbs, who was sentenced to death by hanging for the murder of a ship's captain and first mate.

Okay, I'm sorry, pause the story for a second - he convicted a motherfucking pirate. How is that not remembered as the coolest thing any of the Hamilton children ever did?!

Actually, it turns out that Phil did a lot of cool things:

• During the California Gold Rush, he moved to the Golden State (my home! A Hamilton child in my home!) to practise law there for 2 years before returning to New York.
• His legal clients included a great number of the poor, especially sailors, and he charged them less than wealthier clients, showing he shared his father's generosity.
• He was, like many Hamiltons, an abolitionist, and assisted the Underground Railroad by harbouring at least one fugitive slave in his cellar until the escaped slave could continue on to Canada.

For these things he should be remembered at least as much as his siblings, but he isn't. He just isn't.

He died on 9 July 1884, at age 82, "relatively poor", in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Well, I remember you, not-so-little Phil. And hopefully now all my readers will, too!

-Nym