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History of 30June1780 letter

One of my curiosities has always been the provenance (if that‘s the appropriate term) for some of the historical letters relating to Hamilton. We know that a lot of letters are missing - in some cases we know the reasons why, in others we can only speculate. I’ve asked before how the letters from AH to John Laurens made their way into the Hamilton family collection, and I came across one piece of that puzzle for one letter: the 30June 1780 letter seemed to have been in the collection of a Tristram Coffin? of Poughkeepsie in the late 1800s. Based on my quick research, he was a lawyer who resided in NYC and Poughkeepsie, a descendant of the MA Tristram Coffin line, in 1881 may have become co-owner of the Jethro Coffin house in Nantucket, and in general seemed to have history interests. Coffin sold it to J.P. Morgan (yes, that J.P. Morgan; Coffin assures him that he’ll sell it for a “reasonable price”) who then gave the letter to his son-in-law, William Pierson Hamilton (married to JP’s daughter Juliet Pierpont Morgan). W.P. Hamilton lived from 1869-1950 and was the great-grandson of AH and grandson of JCH. Coffin noted that the letter was unique for 1) never having been published; 2) containing a description of Elizabeth Schuyler by AH.  The docs below appear as images 36 and 37 on the LOC AH digital collection, 1780. 

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Lucy Hicks Anderson

Though she was assigned male at birth, when she entered school she began wearing dresses & calling herself Lucy. Physicians advised her mother to raise her as a girl. In a time, most people weren’t discussing gender identity or expression. They certainly didn’t have language like transgender to describe identity or the medical structure to support medical or legal transition. In 1944 she married Reuben Anderson, a soldier stationed at New York. She was charged with perjury because she was assigned male at birth. The belief was that she committed perjury when she signed the application for a marriage license .She was convicted and placed on probation for 10 years, successfully avoiding a prison sentence. During her perjury trial she was quoted for saying, “I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman. I have lived, dressed, acted just what I am, a woman.” Lucy Hicks Anderson was a pioneer in the fight for marriage equality. She spent nearly sixty years living as a woman. And she made history by fighting for the legal right to be herself with the man she loved

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An anon requested I do this and now I regret my existence.

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This incredible 95-year-old transwoman flight instructor found love late in life– only to be denied social security benefits by the government because she’s not cisgender

A beautiful interview with a woman who transitioned in 1976 shows how life for transgender people has changed over the years, although some terrible consequences remain the same.

Gifs: Lambda Legal

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College students Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Billy Smith and Clarence Henderson begin a sit-in protest at the whites-only lunch counter at a Woolworth’s in Greensboro, N.C., February, 1, 1960.

via reddit

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Re-do of a previously presentation I made. 

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Hirschfeld didn’t believe in the binary of gender or sexuality but believed there was a wide range of identities, recording up to sixty-four in his research. His work was not purely theoretical, however; it had many practical applications. Among those, he performed the first successful modern sex affirmation surgery, thus pioneering sex affirmation surgeries as we know them. Because of his expertise in his field, he was nicknamed “the Einstein of sex,” a title he responded to by stating, “Einstein is the Hirschfeld of physics.”

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hi presley! i keep seeing people talk about ben franklin being a sex crazed person or just being a very sexual person in general, is this true? and can you tell me a little more about this? thank you so much!

Benjamin Franklin was incredible womanizer. As only a teenager, he made advances on his friend’s mistress. In his early twenties he fathered an illegitimate child with an anonymous women he kept hidden for the rest of his life. Even Franklin noticed his libido was unusually high! As he stated himself in his autobiography:

“the hard-to-be-governed passion of my youth had hurried me frequently into intrigues with low women that fell in my way.”

After he married his wife, Deborah, he was off in Europe (mostly London and Paris) gallivanting with other women and had extramarital affairs particularly often. His sexual inclinations were none to most about him, even so much this verse about him circulated:

Franklin, tho`plagued with fumbling ageNeeds nothing to excite him.But is too ready to engageWhen younger arms invite him.

A letter he wrote on June 25th, 1745 offered advice to a young man who was having trouble with his own insatiable libido. The letter was entitled “Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress”. In it Franklin advised: 

“In all your Amours, you should prefer old Women to young ones.“ 

He carried on explaining that older women tend to have more discretion, will take care of you when you’re sick, are cleaner than prostitutes, and that “there is no hazard of children.” He also offered that you cannot perfectly tell who is old or young in the dark. Franklin, however, was mostly what the French referred to as amitie amoureuse, which in English means amorous friendship. In clarity, it was a specific form of intimacy expressed teasing kisses, intense flirting, tender embraces, intimate conversations and love letters, but not necessarily sexual encounters. 

For Benjamin Franklin, his wife, Deborah, was more of an object of the household or company when he needed it. Upon hearing she had a stroke and was on death’s end, Franklin instead of returning simply wrote her a letter of advice. Christmas time, 1754, he had one girl he was interested in named Catharine Ray who was half of his age. In France he had an interest in Anne-Catherine de Ligniville d'Autricourt of many. In conclusion, he really just had too many to count, many of which we may not know about. He was rather open with his romantic or sexual affairs generally. 

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The thing that gets to me about ancient literature, the reason I ended up a classicist instead of doing English like all my teachers thought I should, is that feeling, that moment, when you are reading something written by a stranger literally millennia ago (do you know how long ago 1850 BC is, it’s nearly four thousand years, that’s a lot of time) and you think:

oh, you too, huh?

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svollga:

According to several old books all citing each other, Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge had the reputation of being one of the two handsomest oflicer in the service, the second being one Colonel Livingston.

Ben Tallmage, the fairest of them all.

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In the cause of my black brethren I feel myself warmly interested, and most decidedly side, so far as respects them, against the white part of mankind. Whatever be the complexion of the enslaved, it does not, in my opinion, alter the complexion of the crime which the enslaver commits, a crime much blacker than any African face.

Marquis de Lafayette to John Adams, February 22, 1786. 

Lafayette’s strong convictions on the slave trade.

(via marq-de-laf)

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I cannot urge you to us but… Should the continuation of an evil course of things in your own country lead you to think of a permanent asylum elsewhere you will be sure to find in America a most cordial and welcome reception. The only thing in which our parties agree is to love you

Alexander Hamilton wrote Lafayette on 28 April 1798 (via

sonofhistory

)

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Writing to Miss Harriet Douglas in January, 1833, before her marriage Mrs. Grant remarks: ‘There is a lady in New York who was my playmate in childhood, whom you may chance to meet in society, Mrs Hamilton, the widow of the distinguished General Hamilton, better known to me as ‘Betsy Schuyler.’ There were three sisters: Angelica, elegant and dignified, whom I used to look up to with great awe as a fine lady, and such in after life she proved. I had a letter from her twenty years since, introducing one of her countrymen. Then there was Betsy, good natured and unpretending; and Margaret, very pretty, and a kind of wicked wit. I have a sort of pleasure in referring to this gossip of early days. I never forget one of those once familiarly known to me, and would not like to be forgotten by them.’

Memoirs of an American lady, by Anne MacVicar Grant, With unpublished letters and a memoir of Mrs. Grant by James Grant Wilson.

Anne was a childhood friend of Eliza, who grew up in Albany yet moved to Scotland in 1768, and Eliza would later send her a copy of John Church Hamilton’s biography of his father:

One of these my third son, John, has recently published the first volume of the biography of his father, of which I beg to present you a copy. Although it relates to subjects chiefly of American interest, yet you will, I hope, find many things to amuser you, showing the moral and intellectual development of a mind always exerted to promote the honor of his country and the happiness of his fellow creatures, but of a character perhaps to frank and independent for a Democratic people. The subsequent volumes will embrace topics of high national interest and display traits of character which will make even Scotland, so fertile in genius and virtue, proud to enumerate him among her descendants.

 - Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton to Anne MacVicar Grant, 13 June 1834

(via iafayettes)

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Barnard Bulletin, New York, December 20, 1935

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If there be a man in the world I ought to hate, it is Jefferson. With Burr I have always been personally well. But the public good must be paramount.

From

Alexander Hamilton

to Gouverneur Morris (via

sonofhistory

)

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There’s such a funny, wild and heart breaking story in these newspaper titles. I wish we knew more.

i love that one old timey 1910s trans dude who has a tiny wikipedia page for himself that he earned entirely due to him starting fights in bars and being the city’s hottest casanova