"You must not Insist upon depriving us of them...": Philip and Catharine Schuyler as Protective Grandparents

by Ian Mumpton and Jessie Serfilippi

My Dear Sir, 

…It is very natural that you and my Dear Eliza Should be anxious to have your children with you, but in this instance I apprehend your prudence has given way to your feelings[.] The fatal disorder [i.e. Yellow Fever] which has so severely been experienced at Philadelphia, may have abated, or even for the present apparently subsided, but many months must elapsed before it can be determined that the dreadful Scene will not be renewed… I have concluded that It would be improper to Acceed to your wish, If however after some farther experience you shall Judge that all danger is past, I will either carry down the little one and his nurse, or send them in charge of my son Rensselaer, but the others we all agree must remain until Spring…
The children are all in perfect health, so happy and docile and afford us so much pleasure and real satisfaction that we should part with them with infinite reluctance, you must not therefore Insist upon depriving us of them. They all Join us in love, to you & Eliza. 

I am my Dear Sir   Most affectionately Yours 

Ph: Schuyler 17 November 1793

John Church Hamilton was less than two years old when his
grandfather wrote the above letter to his parents, arguing that
it was too dangerous to send the children back to Philadelphia
after the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793.

Today is Grandparents day in the US. Had they celebrated the day in the 18th century, Philip and Catharine Schuyler would have been inundated with cards. Their eight children that Philip and Catharine saw live to adulthood brought a total of thirty-nine grandchildren into their lives! Philip and Catharine proved to be doting grandparents, and took an active interest in their grandchildren’s  happiness, educations, and safety.

The letter above was written on the 17th of November, 1793. The previous summer’s outbreak of Yellow Fever had been particularly deadly, especially in the city of Philadelphia. In order to protect their children from the illness, Alexander and Elizabeth Schuyler had sent their six children to their grandparents’ home in Albany. Despite the return of cooler weather that Autumn and the abatement of the epidemic, Philip and Catharine still feared for their grandchildren’s safety… refusing to send them to Philadelphia until the following Spring.

Given the wide age-range amongst their own children (the oldest and youngest of whom shared a birthday, twenty-five years apart), Catharine was raising her last child at the same time that her oldest daughters were raising their first children. Her daughter Elizabeth gave birth to her first child at the Schuylers’ home in Albany not long after her youngest sister was born.

Because of this age gap, Philip and Catharine did not meet all of the grandchildren. Of the thirty-nine grand-kids, only twenty-seven had been born at the time of Catharine and Philip’s deaths (in 1803 and 1804 respectively). Sadly, of these twenty-seven, the Schuyler family would bury seven grandchildren, including six who died in infancy or childhood, and one, their grandson Philip Hamilton, who was killed in a duel at the age of nineteen. In total, thirty of the thirty-nine grandchildren survived to adulthood.

While it is heartbreaking to think that the family had to grieve the losses of nearly a quarter of that generation, these statistics were a marked improvement over those of the generation before- Catharine lost seven out of fifteen of her children before their first birthdays.  It is small wonder that the Schuylers’ were unwilling to send their grandchildren back to Philadelphia without the complete certainty that the epidemic which had claimed the lives of a full ten percent of the population of the city was truly over!