Eliza schuyler hamilton biography broadway

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Eliza helped Hamilton write speeches and establish his career.

Eliza was a source of valuable advice and wisdom to Hamilton as his political career began to take off after the war. In short she is so strange a creature, that she possesses all the beauties, virtues and graces of her sex without any of those amiable defects which from their general prevalence are esteemed by connoisseurs necessary shades in the character of a fine woman.” Hamilton wrote to Angelica.

According to Chernow, she recruited “as many as thirty assistants” to help her look through his writings, interviewed “elderly politicians” who had known and worked with him and consulted correspondence between Alexander and Washington.

Hamilton Eliza does not interview politicians, but rather Hamilton’s fellow soldiers. She outlived her husband by 50 years, and made the most of her extraordinarily long and tumultuous life.

Elizabeth Schuyler was born on August 9, 1757, the daughter of the Revolutionary War leader Major General Philip Schuyler.

"I'm erasing myself from the narrative / let future historians wonder how Eliza reacted / when you broke her heart," she sings, referencing a very real historical ambiguity.

In his 2004 biography of Hamilton, which Miranda used as the basis for the show, Ron Chernow wrote that Eliza destroyed her own letters to Hamilton, but her reasons remain unknown.

That came on November 9, 1854, three months after her 97th birthday.

James Hamilton once complimented his mother’s heroic work for poor orphans, and she replied pragmatically, “My Maker has pointed out this duty to me, and has given me the skill and inclination to perform it.” She could have been speaking about her unceasing effort to honor her late husband.

“I think anyone else would have been broken” by the tragedies Elizabeth faced, Chernow says.

To prepare for the role, Soo dove into Ron Chernow’s definitive biography of Alexander Hamilton, the source material for Hamilton’s songwriter, lyricist and lead actor Lin-Manuel Miranda.

According to Presnell, the years following Alexander's death were marked by poverty for Eliza and her children, though she did raise enough money to re-purchase the couple's home, the Grange.

She made quite an impression with her witty, yet practical, personality—especially on General George Washington’s chief aide, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton. In 1833, 76-year-old Elizabeth sold the Grange and moved downtown into a Federal-style townhouse with her daughter Eliza, son Alexander and their families. At a dinner for about 40 guests, Polk remarked in his diary that “Mrs.

In real life, two years after Hamilton's death, Eliza really did help to establish the Orphan Asylum Society of the City of New York, which still exists today as a family services agency named Graham Windham. Hundreds of dignitaries came to pay their respects, including their next-door neighbor, General Winfield Scott; Senator William Seward of New York, and President Millard Fillmore.

In upper Manhattan, the Hamiltons built an airy country house they called the Grange. Today, the National Park Service manages the yellow Federal-style mansion as Hamilton Grange National Memorial.,

Alexander enjoyed the Grange for just two years. Nothing is said about her soliciting help from other people to scan through her husband’s writings – the same way there is no mention of the women she co-founded the orphanage with.

After Eliza’s husband died and she moved to Washington D.C. in 1842, Elizabeth often traveled to visit her daughter in the capital, where she always received a flurry of invitations, including from Presidents Tyler, Polk and Pierce. This idea is translated into the song, with the constant repetition of the word “time”.

Chernow relates that Alexander’s biography was Elizabeth’s “dearest object”, and, despite the fact that, in the musical, Elizabeth claims to be “proudest of” the orphanage, the lyrics and the title of the song suggest that the most important thing is actually telling the story.

“She was the last living link to the Revolutionary era,” says Liam Strain, chief of operations for Hamilton Grange and other Park Service sites.