#ledja is hamilton's cousin Peter's mistress

[xoxo-devdas]

Thinking about Ledja again

[yr-obedt-cicero]

If it is possible, can you tell us more about James Jr (the brother of ham sr) ?

Knowledge about James's life is very scant, and there is little to say.

James Hamilton Jr was born sometime in 1753, having been named after his father, James Hamilton. Four or two years later, James's younger brother, Alexander Hamilton, was born on the 11th of January. Rachel inherited a property in the capital Charlestown, and also three enslaved servants from her mother who were; Rebecca, Flora, and Esther, one of them had a son named Ajax. He was assigned to care for James Jr and his brother.

February 19, 1768, his mother died from Yellow Fever. The town judge supplied both James Jr and Hamilton some shoes and veils for their mother's funeral. James Jr and his brother had to wait as the court struggled to settle the complicated decision of what to do with Rachel's property, children, and debts.

“The court decided that it had to consider three possible heirs: Peter Lavien, whose father had divorced Rachel ‘for valid reasons (according to information obtained by the court) by the highest authority,’ and the illegitimate James and Alexander, the ‘obscene children born after the deceased person's divorce.’”

(source — Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow)

After that, the two Hamilton boys were sent to live with their thirty-two year old cousin, Peter Lytton. Who was a less than an ideal caretaker, with his failed business investments, and his brother considered him “insane”.

(Tw; minor talk of suicide)

On July 16, 1769, Peter was found dead in his bed, soaked in a pool of his own blood. Court records deducted it was an act of suicide, and that Peter had either shot or stabbed himself. The Hamilton boys were left out of Peter's will, and instead focused on supplying Ledja - Peter's black mistress - and their mixed-race son. Then James Lytton, Peter's father and the boys' uncle, tried to assist the them when he heard of Peter's death. But he wasn't very successful due to more court complications that came alongside Peter's death. Yet, that same year in August, James Lytton had also died; and failed to mention his nephews in his will that was prepared five days beforehand.

After this, James and his younger brother were separated, and would never see the other again. James was then apprenticed by an aging Christiansted carpenter, Thomas McNobeny. Which was telling about his limited abilities. Most white folk shied away from crafts such as carpentry, where they had to compete with folks of mixed races, or even skilled slave labor. Chernow points out that if James shown any real promise or head for business; it is doubtful that he would have dropped so low as to resort to manual work. Being an awful contrast to his younger brother, who had begun to clerk for the mercantile house of Beekman and Cruger, the New York traders who had supplied his mother with provisions. It implies James Jr was the less educated of the two, or perhaps he was more brawny.

Not much can be said about James and his adult life. But his grown-up younger brother had gained contact with him sometime in 1785. Hamilton wrote to James Jr 2 months before James sent a letter to Hamilton, in which he described his poor conditions. Hamilton soon replied with another letter;

“New York, June 22, 1785.

My Dear Brother:

I have received your letter of the 31st of May last, which, and one other, are the only letters I have received from you in many years. I am a little surprised you did not receive one which I wrote to you about six months ago. The situation you describe yourself to be in gives me much pain, and nothing will make me happier than, as far as may be in my power, to contribute to your relief. I will cheerfully pay your draft upon me for fifty pounds sterling, whenever it shall appear. I wish it was in my power to desire you to enlarge the sum; but though my future prospects are of the most flattering kind my present engagements would render it inconvenient to me to advance you a larger sum. My affection for you, however, will not permit me to be inattentive to your welfare, and I hope time will prove to you that I feel all the sentiment of a brother. Let me only request of you to exert your industry for a year or two more where you are, and at the end of that time I promise myself to be able to [invite you to a more] comfortable settlement [in this Country. Allow me only to give you one caution, which is to avoid if possible getting in debt. Are you married or single? If the latter, it is my wish for many reasons it may be agreeable to you to continue in that state.

But what has become of our dear father? It is an age since I have heared] from him or of him, though I have written him several letters. Perhaps, alas! he is no more, and I shall not have the pleasing opportunity of contributing to render the close of his life more happy than the progress of it. My heart bleeds at the recollection of his misfortunes and embarrassments. Sometimes I flatter myself his brothers have extended their support to him, and that he now enjoys tranquillity and ease. At other times I fear he is suffering in indigence. I entreat you, if you can, to relieve me from my doubts, and let me know how or where he is, if alive, if dead, how and where he died. Should he be alive inform him of my inquiries, beg him to write to me, and tell him how ready I shall be to devote myself and all I have to his accommodation and happiness.

I do not advise your coming to this country at present, for the war has also put things out of order here, and people in your business find a subsistence difficult enough. My object will be, by-and-by, to get you settled on a farm.

Believe me always your affectionate friend and brother,

Alex. Hamilton”

(source — Alexander Hamilton to James Hamilton Jr, [June 22, 1785])

The brothers seemed to have shared longer correspondence, but only a fragment survives with this one letter. James seemed to have confined to his brother about a sort of pain he is in, wether emotional or physical isn't specified.

Despite their long distance through the many years, Hamilton is happy to send his brother cash to help himself with. Which seems to his way of promising James he still cares about him as his brother; “My affection for you, however, will not permit me to be inattentive to your welfare, and I hope time will prove to you that I feel all the sentiment of a brother.”

Hamilton was preparing for his brother to move to America with him, where there he would be able to better support his brother. Even teasingly telling him that if he wasn't yet married to wait so he could get himself an American wife.

It isn't known if James Jr was still in contact with his father or not, but Hamilton seems to think so. And considering later Hamilton himself got back in contact with their father, it isn't unlikely to assume James Jr had sooner.

The letter was apparently given to the National Intelligencer by a Hamilton family member;

“A member of the family of the late General Alexander Hamilton has handed us a copy of the subjoined letter from that distinguished soldier and statesman to his brother, which it is thought will possess interest for our readers.”

(source — Littell's Living Age, Volume 60)

Although interestingly enough, James Jr disappears from the St. Croix and Nevis records after 1786. Danish writer, Holger Utke Ramsing; found that the only Hamilton recorded to be living in St. Croix after 1786 was a “Madame Anna Hamilton,” and Ramsing presumed that was his childless widow. However, Mennonite records show that, in 1889, a Benjamin Franklin Hamilton was ordained as a bishop, and he is recorded to be the son of a nephew of Alexander Hamilton.

The Hamilton National Genealogical Society has a record of James Jr apparently marrying a Catherine or Courtney Bailey in Baltimore in 1796. And then dying there in 1835, almost 40 years after his assumed death date. Ramsing assumed James had died in 1786 due to his absence in the St. Croix property records, but that would not be true if Benjamin's lineage is accurate. Ramsing did publish his findings in 1939 — so it is plausible he overlooked or was not presented with American records due to old technologically, or distance constraints. If James migrated to Baltimore in 1786, it would explain his absence from St. Croix. It isn't definitively known if Anna Hamilton was even related to James or an unrelated woman with a shared surname. As it is also possible he was common-law married to Anna before abandoning her to go to the States, but there is, unfortunately, no way for us to know for certain. Additionally, Mitchell Hamilton argues that James Jr lived on several of the southern islands before he moved to St. Vincent sometime before June, 1793.

So overall, it is likely James Jr probably left the Carribean for America like Hamilton wanted around 1786. And then settled in Baltimore, where he married a Miss Bailey and the couple had some children. To which then they had children, one of whom became a Mennonite bishop. But not much else is known about him, and there are no mentions of Hamilton and James ever meeting in America.

[ultrahamilham]

Also side note Johann wasted most of his wealth before marrying Rachel. So i am assuming once wed Johann got her wealth.

Rachel felt stifled by her older husband, finding him crude and insufferable. She was miserable with him.

In 1746 the teenage bride gave birth to Peter her only legitimate son. In 1748, Lavien bought a half share in another small sugar plantation, enlarging his debt and frittering away Rachel’s fast dwindling inheritance. The marriage deteriorated to the point where the headstrong wife simply abandoned the house around 1750.

Lavien ranted in a subsequent divorce decree that while Rachel had lived with him she had “committed such errors which as between husband and wife were indecent and very suspicious.” In his severe judgment she was “shameless, coarse, and ungodly." Enraged, his pride bruised, Lavien was determined to humiliate his unruly bride. Seizing on a Danish law that allowed a husband to jail his wife if she was twice found guilty of adultery and no longer resided with him.

In Fort Christiansvaern they could be whipped, branded, and castrated, shackled with heavy leg irons, and entombed in filthy dungeons. The remaining cells tended to be populated by town drunks, petty thieves, and the other dregs of white society. It seems that no woman other than Rachel Lavien was ever imprisoned there for adultery.

Lavien imagined that when Rachel was released after three to five months this broken woman would now tamely submit to his autocratic rule that:

“Everything would be better and that she like a true wife would have changed her ungodly mode of life and would live with him as was meet and fitting,” as the divorce decree later proclaimed.

In reality he had not broken her invincible spirit. Her time in jail only made her want to get rid of him more.

After staying with her mother for a week Rachel did something brave but reckless that sealed her future status as a outcast: she fled the island, abandoning both Lavien and her sole son, Peter. In doing so, she relinquished the future benefits of a legal separation.

Now James Hamilton, had also been bedeviled by misfortune in the islands. Born around 1718, he was the fourth of eleven children (nine sons, two daughters). He and Rachel met in the early 1750s. They had two known children James in 1753(?) and Alex in 1755(?).

She put her two sons in a Jewish school. A large percent of the community were Jewish. The island they lived on was full of violence and gore. Hamilton saw or lived off the violence and gore is saw daily (either with the inhumane slave treatment or duels).

Lavien wish to marry his new woman that abruptly prompted him to obtain an official divorce summons from Rachel on February 26, 1759.

In a document seething with outrage, Lavien branded Rachel a scarlet woman, given to a sinful life. Having failed to mend her ways after imprisonment, the decree stated, Rachel had “absented herself from Lavien for nine years and gone elsewhere, where she has begotten several illegitimate children, so that such action is believed to be more than sufficient for him to obtain a divorce from her.”

And so Rachel was brandish as a whore. He two sons became bastards and she couldn't have Hamilton in her name. James Sr. let the boys keep his surname.

This was how Lavien designated Alexander and his brother: whore-children. He was determined to preserve his wealth for his one legitimate son, thirteen-year-old Peter. Thrust back into the world of her former disgrace, Rachel lived blocks from the fort where she had been jailed and no longer had the liberty of posing as “Mrs. Hamilton. And most likely Alex never laid eyes on his father for the man was a workaholic and scrounging off his brother's fortunes.

Rachel and the kids were taken care of by Anne her sister and James Lytton her husband. And Rachel made clothes to sell.

In 1767 thirty-eight year old Rachel and her son Alexander contracted a unnamed illness. Rachel had to endure an emetic and a medicinal herb called valerian, which expelled gas from the alimentary canal. Alexander submitted to bloodletting and an enema. On February 19th 1767 at 9:00PM Rachel passed away as her son lay beside her. Alexander survived and attended the funeral while still ill he recovered enough to stand.

And the two were sent to their cousin Peter Lytton. Unlike in the musical Peter Lytton didn't end his own life by hanging. On July 16, 1769, PeterLytton was found dead in his bed, soaked in a pool of blood. According to court records, he had committed suicide and either “stabbed or shot himself. Peter's black mistress Ledja nor their son informed the boys.

And from there Alexander's story takes place.

Ooooh okay! That's pretty interesting!!!