#lawrence is texting like it's 1789!

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[46ten]

AH and Peter Lavien connections, part 1

Engrossed by our own immediate concerns, I omitted telling you of a disagreeable piece of intelligence I have received from a gentleman of Georgia. He tells me of the death of my brother Levine. You know the circumstances that abate my distress, yet my heart acknowledges the rights of a brother. He dies rich, but has disposed of the bulk of his fortune to strangers. I am told he has left me a legacy. I did not inquire how much.  AH to EH, [1782]

From Allan McLane Hamilton’s Intimate Life, and as far as I know, the letter itself (and the rest of the text) has not been found/copied.

As most know, Peter Lavien was AH’s half-brother, the son of Rachel Faucette and her first (and only) husband, John Michael Lavien. Thanks to the 1759 divorce decree (making AH and full-brother James illegitimate forevermore), Peter inherited her entire estate upon her death. Peter had moved to South Carolina in the 1760s, but briefly returned to St. Croix in 1769 to settle his mother’s estate. According to Peter Lavien’s 1778 last Will and Testament: “I give and bequeath to Alexander Hamilton and his brother Robert Hamilton (as the Testator believes)  [?! - Peter clearly knew of one brother more than the other!] each one hundred and fifty pounds sterling” (cited by Michael E. Newton in AH: The Formative Years from the Papers of John Kean.)

We know the date of the above letter is prior to Oct 1782 based on a letter to Nathanael Greene (below), but 1782 doesn’t quite make sense to me - AH was in Albany with EH from Nov 1781-Nov 1782. It seems far more likely to me that this letter dates from the July-Oct 1781 period, especially with mention of “immediate concerns” (wartime). Most interesting to me is that people knew AH’s half-brother was Peter Lavien and AH should be informed of his death. This also implies that AH’s background and family situation was fairly common knowledge (as I feel I have argued constantly).

Let’s go to the 12Oct1782, AH to Nathanael Greene letter:

I take the liberty to inclose you a letter to Mr. Kane Executor to the estate of Mr. Lavine, a half brother of mine who died some time since in South Carolina. Capt Roberts, if you should not be acquainted with him, can inform you who he is. I shall be much obliged to you to have my letter carefully forwarded.

(AH is writing from Albany, we presume - the letter that LOC has and Founders features is a copy of the original letter, and I’ve talked enough about the letter transcription issue so I’m not going to repeat it here. And BTW, the Kean family name is pronounced Kane with a long a, not Keen with a long e, so AH isn’t entirely wrong to spell it Kane, how he had likely heard it pronounced.) 

It’s unclear when Peter Lavien died. One source cites both 1780 and 1781 (The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: 1514-1861 by Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Alexander Moore, George C. Rogers, Stephen R. Wise, Gerhard Spieler), although it’s consistent that he died in Savannah, Chatham County, Georgia. According to Newton, he died prior to March 1781, based on a newspaper record (pg 534 of Formative Years.) Although a wife is referenced in his will, I can find no further mention of that, but I can find a daughter, Joanna Lavien, whom he lived with in Savannah. She was married to João Carlos Lucena...

...a Portuguese born marrano, a new Christian, born into a family that may have continued being secretly Jewish since the 16th century.  If so their religion did not survive the family move from Portugal in 1761 to the then British colonies in North America, initially at Rhode Island where his father was granted a patent for the production of Castile soap.  The family eventually settled in Savanah where he married Joanna Lavien, the daughter of a prominent Jewish West India merchant [46ten notes: Newton has done tons of research on this point and can find no evidence that the Laviens were ever Jewish. Peter was christened in St. Croix as an adult.]. Joanna’s father left her extensive estates in South Carolina and Georgia in his will but these were confiscated when John Charles, as he was now known, remained loyal to the British crown in the American revolution. By the 1790’s John Charles was in London where he became the Portuguese Consul. In 1791 he married again, in Hampstead, to Mary Ann Lancaster (he had become a practising Anglican whilst in America) with whom he had four children.  He died in 1813 was buried at St Pancras Old Church.  He died a wealthy man, leaving an estate worth over £100,000.  https://thelondondead.blogspot.com/2016/11/how-to-rise-in-society-housemaids-tale.html

John Charles (anglicized) and Joanna went to Europe following her father’s death.  

From The History of Beaufort..., above: 

[Peter] Lavien and [Captain Samuel] Grove were considered the largest indigo shippers in the Beaufort District (SC). Lavien became prominent in Beaufort and was selected for the vestry of St. Helena Parish despite the fact that his father, John Lavien, was one of the prominent Jewish [NO!] merchants and planters in the Danish West Indies. The Revolution disrupted the firm’s trade and Lavien’s partner died at sea in 1775. Lavien then became Beaufort’s most prominent smuggler early in the Revolutionary War. Family and business connections, and political hostility, forced Lavien to move to Savannah in 1777....Lavien had left his property in the hands of [Grove’s] stepson, John Kean, who was a consistent patriot [and also served as executor of Grove’s sizable estate]...Lavien’s will divided his large estate between the Lucenas of Savannah and John Kean of Beaufort. The Lucenas remained loyal to the crown, and most of their Georgia property was confiscated....

John Kean (1756-1795) had apprenticed as a bookkeeper for Lavien, rising to the position of “copartner.” He auctioned off Lavien’s remaining property, including “fifty-five valuable slaves, chiefly country born, some plantation tools, horses, etc.” (Newton, Formative Years, pg 535, sourcing several newspaper articles). An inheritor of both his step-father’s and former boss’s estates, Kean became SC delegate to the Continental Congress. In 1786, he moved to NYC and began working with the the mercantile firm of LeRoy, Bayard, and Company - yes, the firm of William Bayard Jr, whose home AH would die in. In August 1789, GW appointed Kean as a commissioner for settling accounts between the United States and the individual states. See Commissioners for Settling Accounts to GW, 21 July 1790, n.1. Founders notes: “Oliver Wolcott, Jr., hoped that Kean would be named auditor (see Lear to GW, 23 June), and Peter Van Brugh Livingston [Kean’s father-in-law] wrote GW from Elizabethtown, N.J., on 1 June “in behalf of my Friend Mr John Kean, whose losses by three recent Insolvencies have been very considerable, as the office he now enjoys by your favor is like to be of no long Duration, that your Excellency would be pleased to confer on him one more permanent,” specifically, the comptrollership (DLC:GW). GW appointed Kean to neither office, and Kean resigned from the board of commissioners in October to become Cashier of the Bank of the United States (see Kean to GW, 31 October).”

Thus, the former apprentice, executor, and inheritor to Peter Lavien’s estate (and may have gotten a portion of Rachel’s estate too) winds up in a position where he is in constant communication with Lavien’s half-brother AH. Strange, huh? It gets better! Part 2 to come.