Eliza Schuyler: What happened to Alexander Hamilton’s wife Elizabeth after his death

As Hamilton is released on Disney Plus, the real lives of Alexander Hamilton and the characters in the musical are being discovered by new audiences.

Hamilton’s wife Eliza Schuyler was a key part of his life, but she was also an important historical character in her own right. Introduced at the very start of the musical, in the song “Alexander Hamilton”, Eliza is central to the plot, and adds an important female voice to a show about politics and America’s Founding Fathers.

Who was Eliza Schuyler?

Born Elizabeth Schuyler, and later known as Eliza Hamilton, Alexander’s wife was the co-founder and deputy director of the first private orphanage in New York City. She is respected as an early philanthropist for her work with the Orphan Asylum Society.

She was born in Albany, New York To Philip Schyler and Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler. The Van Rensselaers of the Manor of Rensselaerswyck were one of the richest and most politically influential families in the state of New York, so she came from a very different background to Hamilton, who arrived in the States as an orphan. Both her mother and father came from wealthy and well-regarded families. Eliza would have grown up around slavery as her father was a slave owner.

How did she meet Hamilton?

In early 1780, Elizabeth went to stay with her aunt in New Jersey where she met Hamilton, who was one of General George Washington’s aides-de-camp at the time. He had been stationed along with the General and his men in Morristown. She also met and became friends with Martha Washington, a friendship they would maintain throughout their husbands’ political careers. Eliza later said of the president’s wife that “she was always my ideal of a true woman.”

She kept in touch with Hamilton through letters, and married him in 1780.

Was she involved with Hamilton’s work?

Eliza was supportive of her husband throughout his career and aided him with his political writings. Some parts of his 31-page letter to Robert Morris, laying out much of the financial knowledge that was to aid him later in his career, are actually in her handwriting.

She continued to help Hamilton throughout his political career, serving as an intermediary between him and his publisher when he was writing The Federalist Papers, copying out portions of his defense of the Bank of the United States, and staying up late with him so he could read Washington’s Farewell Address out loud to her as he wrote it.

Was it a happy marriage?

Eliza was an ardent supporter of her husband, but it wasn’t always plain sailing in their marriage. In 1797 Eliza was told of an affair that had taken place several years earlier between Hamilton and Maria Reynolds, a young woman who had first approached him for financial assistance. The affair was supposedly encouraged by Maria’s husband James Reynolds who then asked Hamilton for hush money to keep the affair out of public knowledge, which he paid.

Eliza didn’t believe the charges when they were first leveled against her husband, but in 1797, Hamilton published a pamphlet, later known as the Reynolds Pamphlet, admitting to his one-year adulterous affair. He published the pamphlet in order to refute the charges that he had been involved in public misconduct with Maria’s husband James Reynolds, and to avoid accusations of embezzlement.

What happened after Hamilton’s death?

After her husband was shot by Aaron Burr, Eliza was left to pay off his debts. The Grange, their house on a 35-acre estate in upper Manhattan, was sold at public auction, but she later repurchased it from Hamilton’s executors, who felt that she could not be dispossessed of her home, and purchased it themselves to sell back to her at half the price.

In 1798, she accepted her friend Isabella Graham’s invitation to join the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children that had been established the previous year. In 1806, two years after her husband’s death, she, along with several other women, founded the Orphan Asylum Society.

Eliza remained dedicated to preserving her husband’s legacy. She re-organized all of Hamilton’s letters, papers, and writings with the help of her son, John Church Hamilton, and persevered through many setbacks in getting his biography published