Speaker 1: All right. Imagine a famous spouse with a big personality
Speaker 1: who hooks up with your sister, then cheats on you
Speaker 1: really publicly with somebody else, spends a huge amount of
Speaker 1: time away from home, and finally gets shot and killed
Speaker 1: by arrival Alexander Hamilton. Right, but what about his wife?
Speaker 1: I'm Patti Steele. Eliza's life after the most famous duel.
Speaker 1: That's next on the backstory. The backstory is back. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine being married to a really famous person with
Speaker 1: like this fiery, impulsive but very witty personality, while your
Speaker 1: gentle calm always putting other people first. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a recipe for a tough relationship, right at least for
Speaker 1: the quieter spouse. That was the marriage of Alexander and
Speaker 1: Eliza Hamilton, and life with him during their twenty four
Speaker 1: year marriage was I don't know anything but relaxed. In
Speaker 1: those twenty four years when he wasn't constantly away. There
Speaker 1: were eight children, many political battles, Hamilton's affairs, including one
Speaker 1: with her sister, another with a woman who blackmailed and
Speaker 1: publicly humiliated him, the death in a duel of their
Speaker 1: oldest son, who was just defending his dad's honor. The
Speaker 1: mental illness of their oldest daughter, and finally the infamous
Speaker 1: death of Alexander Hamilton and yet another duel in eighteen
Speaker 1: oh four. Whew, what a life. But here's what's great
Speaker 1: about Eliza. Some people managed to make the challenges in
Speaker 1: life into opportunities to blossom, and she defined that approach
Speaker 1: to life. Eliza was born in seventeen fifty seven to
Speaker 1: a really prominent family. Her dad, Philip Schuyler, was a politician,
Speaker 1: a general in the Continental Army, and a wealthy businessman.
Speaker 1: Her mother, Catherine, a socialite. They had fifteen children, eight
Speaker 1: of whom survived into adulthood. Now, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: Eliza fell in love with Alexander Hamilton, who was born
Speaker 1: out of wedlock in seventeen fifty five to a poor
Speaker 1: mother and a father who abandoned the family on an
Speaker 1: island in the British West Indies. When he was thirteen,
Speaker 1: his mother died, leaving him and his brother orphaned. But
Speaker 1: he was a smart and ambitious guy. Made his way
Speaker 1: to America, where he went to college. Eventually, Hamilton became
Speaker 1: an aide to George Washington, becoming like a son to him,
Speaker 1: and that is how he met Eliza while Washington was
Speaker 1: meeting with her father. Hamilton knew as she was a
Speaker 1: catch for him with a wealthy, powerful father, and he
Speaker 1: went after her intensely, writing to her, I meet you
Speaker 1: in every dream, and when I wake, I cannot close
Speaker 1: my eyes for ruminating on your sweetness. But he also
Speaker 1: wrote about her to a pal, sounding a little less passionate, saying,
Speaker 1: though not a genius, she has good sense enough to
Speaker 1: be agreeable, and though not a beauty, she has fine
Speaker 1: black eyes, is rather handsome, and has every other requie
Speaker 1: of the exterior to make a lover happy way more practical.
Speaker 1: In seventeen eighty, Eliza married Hamilton at her family's mansion,
Speaker 1: but she had an older sister, Angelica, who was beautiful
Speaker 1: and charming and smart, and despite being married to a
Speaker 1: powerful guy herself, she had a whole bunch of flirtations
Speaker 1: and maybe more with other powerful men, including Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 1: the Marquis de Lafayette, and her brother in law Alexander Hamilton.
Speaker 1: In one letter, Angelica even told Elizabeth that she loved
Speaker 1: Alexander very much, and if you were as generous as
Speaker 1: the old Romans, you would lend him to me for
Speaker 1: a little while. Wow. I wonder how Eliza felt about that.
Speaker 1: Most historians do agree that the pair had an affair,
Speaker 1: but Hamilton had other affairs as well, and one of
Speaker 1: them was humiliating, both personally and publicly. In seventeen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: Hamilton became the first major American politician publicly involved in
Speaker 1: a sex scandal. Six years before, Hamilton had had an
Speaker 1: affair with twenty three year old Maria Reynolds while he
Speaker 1: was living alone in Philadelphia as Secretary of the Treasury.
Speaker 1: She came to his house claiming her husband was abusive
Speaker 1: and had abandoned her, and she wanted to go home
Speaker 1: to her family in New York, but she didn't have
Speaker 1: any money. Hamilton delivered thirty dollars to her boarding house,
Speaker 1: and while he was there, she took him into her bedroom, and,
Speaker 1: as he put it, some conversation ensued, from which it
Speaker 1: was quickly apparent that other than financial consolation would be acceptable.
Speaker 1: I'll bet turns out Maria's husband, who had not abandoned her,
Speaker 1: knew about the affair and actually was probably orchestrating it
Speaker 1: from the beginning. At first, he threatened to tell Eliza
Speaker 1: Hamilton what was going on, unless Alexander gave him a
Speaker 1: thousand bucks, which Hamilton then handed over. But he also
Speaker 1: told Hamilton he could keep seeing his wife, which he did,
Speaker 1: and soon there were demands for more money, which Hamilton
Speaker 1: gave them. Well. The affair ended after a year or so,
Speaker 1: but six years later Reynolds was caught in an illegal
Speaker 1: scheme to make money from the government. He claimed Hamilton
Speaker 1: was part of that scheme. So Hamilton decides the best
Speaker 1: way out is to write a tell all about the
Speaker 1: sexual affair and also make it clear he has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the illegal money making affair. In the
Speaker 1: pamphlet he put out, he wrote, the bare perusal of
Speaker 1: the letters from Reynolds and his wife is sufficient to
Speaker 1: convince my greatest enemy that there's nothing worse than the
Speaker 1: affair than my irregular and indelicate amour. Wow, smooth talker,
Speaker 1: and guess what. It worked. But the affair did put
Speaker 1: an end to any further political dreams for Hamilton. Obviously
Speaker 1: no criminal charges, and it humiliated Eliza. The press attacked
Speaker 1: her as well, saying, art thou a wife see him
Speaker 1: whom thou hast chown for the partner of this life?
Speaker 1: Lolling in the lap of a Harlot. Wow, not too
Speaker 1: painful for her, right, You'd think this was enough upset
Speaker 1: for one lifetime. But then in eighteen oh one, the
Speaker 1: Hamilton's oldest son, Philip, then only nineteen, heard a speech
Speaker 1: by a guy who claimed his dad, Alexander Hamilton, would
Speaker 1: try to overthrow President Thomas Jefferson. So he felt the
Speaker 1: need to defend his dad's honor and challenge the guy
Speaker 1: to a duel. Fair to say, it didn't end well.
Speaker 1: Young Philip was shot and killed. Then Philip's death caused
Speaker 1: his seventeen year old sister to have a mental breakdown,
Speaker 1: from which she never recovered. Finally, we get to Hamilton's
Speaker 1: duel with then Vice President Aaron Burr. The political enemies
Speaker 1: met on the shores of the Hudson River and Weehawk
Speaker 1: in New Jersey on July eleventh, eighteen oh four. Shots
Speaker 1: were fired, Hamilton fell and was taken to a friend's
Speaker 1: home in Greenwich Village, where he died the next day.
Speaker 1: He was forty eight years old. So at forty six,
Speaker 1: Eliza was a widow with seven surviving children, and in
Speaker 1: the previous three years she had lost her husband, her son,
Speaker 1: her mother, and father and her sister. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: She truly blossomed into her own being after Alexander's death.
Speaker 1: She was a fabulous woman for another fifty years. First,
Speaker 1: and foremost, she spent those years totally resurrecting her husband's reputation,
Speaker 1: finding a biographer to tell his story, organizing his papers,
Speaker 1: speaking about him, virtually assigning him a place as a
Speaker 1: Founding father. She also helped found New York's first private
Speaker 1: orphanage in eighteen oh six and worked there for almost
Speaker 1: forty years, taking care of more than seven hundred children.
Speaker 1: She raised her own children and maintained the family home
Speaker 1: in Upper Manhattan, which is now an historic site, and
Speaker 1: she did it with very little money. Her husband left
Speaker 1: her in debt and she wasn't left much money by
Speaker 1: her father. Finally, she moved to Washington, d C. In
Speaker 1: eighteen forty eight and worked to raise money to build
Speaker 1: the Washington Monument, and she was in demand as a
Speaker 1: dinner guest at the White House and all over DC.
Speaker 1: Because of her ties to Colonial America, the Founding Fathers,
Speaker 1: and her vivid storytelling. Eliza Hamilton led a strong, fascinating
Speaker 1: life that allowed her to continue to blossom until She
Speaker 1: finally died in eighteen fifty four at the age of
Speaker 1: ninety seven. I hope you like the Backstory with Patty Steele.
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Speaker 1: story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty
Speaker 1: Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele.
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Speaker 1: for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces
Speaker 1: of history you didn't know you needed to know.