By Jessie Serfilippi
 |
Eliza Schuyler Hamilton
by Henry Inman, 1825. |
In our
previous
blog post about the Schuyler sisters’ land squabble, we ended with a
question: what was Eliza and Caty’s relationship like after the land dispute?
Eliza won, but did she lose her relationship with her little sister as a
consequence of her victory? While we have yet to find letters from Caty to
Eliza dated after the land dispute, there are
a handful of letters, now digitized
by the New York Public Library, from Eliza to Caty that we will examine in
this post to determine the state of Eliza and Caty’s relationship in the years
following their legal trials.
The first known letter after the land dispute is dated
October 25, 1814. Eliza wrote it from her home,
The Grange, in Harlem. The letter
was later published in
A Godchild of
Washington, a biography written about Caty, and the Schuylers, by
Caty’s granddaughter, Katherine Schuyler Baxter. The biography itself is
dubious at best. Filled with many exaggerations, outright legends, and prone to
romanticizing the eighteenth century, what is contained within its pages must
be read critically. It is unlikely that an entire letter from Eliza to Caty
would be fabricated, but the possibility must be kept in mind, especially given
the somewhat odd questions Eliza asked of Caty in the letter.
The premise of the letter isn’t at all strange. Eliza wrote
to Caty to tell her that she may soon “have a prospect soon of seeing my dear
husband’s life in the press,” which thrilled Eliza. She informed Caty that the
biographer was “very anxious to have domestic anecdotes; indeed anything
illustrative of his character” and asked her younger sister to mail her any
memories she may have of her late brother-in-law. While the request itself
isn’t odd—Caty knew Hamilton for the first twenty three years of her life until
his death in 1804 (Alexander Hamilton had married Elizabeth months before Caty
was born)—what, specifically, Eliza requested Caty to recall is strange.
Eliza asked Caty to write of Hamilton’s
…appearance when first known—his
manners—habits and peculiarities—instances of his benevolence—facts connected
with his first appearance at the Bar—and most particularly, anecdotes even of
the most trifling description—circumstances when he left the army—also when in
Legislature at Albany in 1786. Also
Incidents in 1782 while studying law at Albany—style of conversation—and indeed
everything which will illustrate the elasticity of his mind, variety of his
knowledge, playfulness of his wit, excellence of his heart, firmness,
forbearance, virtues, &c.
Most of the memories Eliza requested Caty to recall would
not exist for Caty because she was too
 |
Caty Schuyler at 15. Most of
the time she knew Hamilton
she was a child. |
young at the time the events occurred. When
Hamilton left the army, Caty was under a year old. In 1782, when Hamilton
studied law at the Schuyler Mansion and soon after appeared at the Bar, Caty
was nearing two years of age. When Hamilton was at the “Legislature at Albany,”
Caty was five.
Maybe Eliza forgot the age difference of twenty-four years
between her and her youngest sister, or maybe she asked Caty for recollections
she herself might not have, but may have heard from other family members. As of
seven months prior, with Angelica’s death, Caty was the only other Schuyler sister
left alive.
Whatever Eliza’s motivation for writing to Caty, this letter
shows that the sisters did have a relationship after the land dispute. Eliza
appeared comfortable writing to Caty and asking her for this favor. Near the
beginning of the letter she wrote:
I know the pleasure that you will
take in granting my request, and beg you will on receiving this, make a
memorandum of all your recollections of him.
Eliza not only thought Caty would grant the request, but
that she would find pleasure in doing so. This letter holds none of the
awkwardness that may be expected between the siblings following such a
drawn-out legal battle, but later letters may indicate some reluctance to
correspond on Caty’s part.
In the next surviving letter between the sisters, written by
Eliza from her Harlem home on November 8, 1818, Eliza encouraged Caty to write
to her more often. She wrote:
I wrote to you some time in June
with the shoon [shoes] you requested it would give me pleasure to hear from you
frequently has your plan of residence succeeded and are you as agreably [sic]
situated as your expected.
From this opening line, we know that Eliza sent Caty shoes
she asked for and that Eliza has some basic knowledge about something going on
in Caty’s life. Whether Eliza obtained that knowledge directly from Caty in a
prior letter or through their brother, Philip Jeremiah, and his wife, Mary Ann,
with whom Caty was close, is unclear.
 |
| Caty and her daughter, Catharine. |
During the year this letter was written, Caty lived in
Utica, New York, and had been widowed one year earlier. She had at least three,
possibly four, children, the youngest of whom was three years old and, based on
Eliza’s letter, seemingly had to move into a more affordable living arrangement
upon the death of her husband. In that same letter, Eliza later asked if Caty
had any neighbors and who they were, making it more likely that the “plan of
residence” she referred to was about Caty moving somewhere new.
Eliza spent the next few lines writing about her quest to
find a biographer to write about her late husband. She said she’d been to
“Mount Vernon to Bedford [likely Bedford, MA] and Long Island on the same
subject.” The inclusion of this information makes it seem as if the sisters were
not in the habit of keeping a regular correspondence with each other. These are
trips that would have to made over the course of months at the very least, and
likely not between the time Eliza sent the “shoons” to Caty in June and the
writing of this letter in November. This indicates that while Eliza seemed to
desire a closer relationship with her sister, they had been somewhat distant
from each other over the past few months, if not years.
Eliza closed the letter with some news of their family, perhaps
to remind Caty of the innate bond they shared. She told Caty that their
brother, Philip Jeremiah, “has gone on with his Lady [second wife, Mary Ann
Sawyer] she has grown very full the both look very well.” What Eliza meant when
she said Mary Ann Sawyer had “grown very full” is unclear. Mary Ann may have
been pregnant with a child who did not survive, or Eliza may have been commenting
on her weight. Philip Jeremiah and Mary Ann may have been going to Washington
DC, as he was in the middle of
his term as a
Representative from New York to Congress.
Eliza closed the letter by begging her younger sister to
come stay with her in Harlem over the winter:
I wish you were to pass the winter
with me you have not any thing to do but to take care of your little ones and
that you can do quite as well with me and be giving me a great pleasure tho
living in the Country I can make it agreeable to you we have an excellent
Clergyman near us let me intreat [sic] you to cum [sic] down, I send a little booc [sic] with a few
articles
This letter shows Eliza’s desire for a closer relationship
with her younger sister. While it made what Eliza wanted obvious, what Caty
wanted was still relatively mysterious. It’d be unfair to judge Caty’s lack of response
in this particular situation as she was already dealing with much hardship and
turmoil after the death of her husband. Her lack of response to Eliza is not to
be unexpected. She simply may not have had to time to respond.
The next surviving letter from Eliza to Caty is much shorter,
but provides more insight to the closeness—or lack thereof—they shared:
My dear Sister Grange June 7th-
1820
In a
letter from you to my James [Eliza’s son] you mention your having been ill why
did you not write to me that I might
have gone and taken care of you, let me
intreat [sic] you to cum [sic] and stay with me the change will be of service
to you and bring your little boys with you, you know they will be know [sic] in
convenience to me. but a great pleasure therefor let me pray you to cum [sic] to
me immediately [sic]. Aiedu [sic] Ever affectionatly [sic] Yours Eliza begs to
be remembered to you
Ever
your Affcetionat [sic] Sister
E.
Hamilton
 |
Eliza by Daniel Huntington,
mid-1800s. |
It is now evident that Eliza is not as close to Caty as she
wants to be. Caty wrote to Eliza’s son, James, of her illness instead of to her
sister. Caty may have felt closer to James—they were, after all, nearer to each
other in age than she and Eliza were. There were twenty-four years separating
Eliza and Caty, compared to a mere seven between Caty and James. It is also
possible that Caty simply did not want to correspond with Eliza. Maybe she knew
Eliza would offer to go to her, or entreat her to come to Harlem (as she had in
the past) and didn’t want to spend time with her sister.
This tension between them could stem from the land dispute,
or from the unusual nature of their sisterhood. While they were sisters, Caty
had lived with Eliza, Hamilton, and their children during her schooling. This
could have led to a strange relationship in their older age in which Eliza saw
her more as a child than a sister. It is possible that Caty resented this, and
saw Eliza’s offers to help as more motherly than sisterly.
While it’s unclear if Caty ever took Eliza up on any of her
offers to visit at The Grange, according to , Eliza visited Caty in Oswego in 1847. Eliza would
have been on the verge of turning ninety at the time this journey was made.
While it is certainly possible she made the journey—and her letters to Caty
indicate that she desired such a visit—it is impossible to conclusively state
that she went because, as of now, our only evidence of such a visit is in A Godchild of Washington.
What we do know is that the following year, Eliza sent Caty
a worsted bag she knitted herself. She attached a note to it:
New Brunswick, N.J. Oct. 3d, 1848
My Beloved Sister,
Accept
a little work that I finished since I have entered upon my ninety-second year.
I hope that you and your dear ones are well.
Remember me most affectionately to them all.
You
loving Sister,
Elizabeth
Hamilton
Not long after this, in about 1850, Eliza’s daughter, Elizabeth
Hamilton Holly,
wrote a letter to
Caty. She began her letter by apologizing for not writing her aunt in a
while. In the middle of her explanation for her silence, she added a line about
her mother appearing as she wrote:
Mama has just entered and
inquiring my occupation is now at this moment mingling in memory her spirit
with yours, with both feet placed on the hearth, looking just as she did when
you left her—
It’s implied that Caty had visited Eliza in Washington,
D.C., where she was living at the time, at some point, since Elizabeth says her
mother appeared just as she did when Caty left her. This means that not only is
it possible that Eliza visited Caty, but that Caty may have made the trek to
visit Eliza, as well. Maybe the sisters grew closer in old age—Eliza was 93 and
Caty was 69 in 1850—because they were the only surviving siblings by that
point. Their brother, Philip Jeremiah, died in 1835, and their brother
Rensselaer died in 1847. By 1850, they were the only ones left from their once
large family.
But it’s what comes at the very end of the letter that is
perhaps most interesting. On a separate piece of paper, after already signing
her name, young Elizabeth wrote:
Mama has just gone to her room,
her presence confused my pen, and inquiries still more bewildered the sense of
my note—
She then told her aunt more personal family information that
she didn’t feel able to write about in her mother’s presence. Elizabeth wrote
about her older sister, Angelica, who’d had a breakdown at the age of seventeen
in 1801, visiting her and their mother recently. She told Caty about one of
Cornelia Schuyler’s daughters, Mary Regina, arriving in D.C., and wrote of how
her wealth through her marriage to William Starr Miller gave her the money to
enter into the “gaiety” of Washington society.
The fact that Elizabeth felt “bewildered” by her mother’s
presence suggests that Eliza could be somewhat overbearing and controlling. In
this case, she hijacked her daughter’s letter to her aunt. After all, the
letter was originally signed:
Mamas love to all and mine with
best wishes for present and future happiness
 |
| Eliza at the age of 94. |
This could offer the best insight into the distance between
Eliza and Caty. Eliza may have been too overbearing at times, and Caty wanted
to forge her own path, free of her sister’s control. In light of this
interpretation, it is possible that the land dispute was a symptom of a larger
issue between the two sisters that dated back to Eliza seeing Caty more as one
of her children than one of her sisters. Hopefully, Eliza and Caty were able to
move past this in their old age. Maybe they even grew to enjoy each other’s
presence—whether through letters or visits— and maybe took comfort in sharing
the common memories they had of their parents, siblings, and spouses, who they’d
outlived by so many years.
Thank you to Ian Mumpton and Susan Holloway Scott for the insightful conversations about the nature of Eliza and Caty's relationship throughout their lives.
