Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton

by Tilar J. Mazzeo

  Stationed outside the doors of the Schuyler family mansion in Albany now and at the estate in Saratoga were a half-dozen guards and soldiers. Philip Schuyler was taking no chances. Eliza and her sisters were friendly with a young woman named Jane McCrea who lived with her brother in Saratoga and was nearly the same age as Angelica. Miss McCrea’s brother, Colonel John McCrea, fought in the Albany militia with their father. Word of Jane’s murder and scalping in the spring ignited passions against the natives and General Burgoyne in the countryside. Eliza and her mother were in Saratoga when the word of the scalping spread through the Hudson, and Eliza remembered afterward that her “father was so alarmed by the killing of Miss McCrea” that he sent an armed escort to fetch his wife and daughter back to Albany. The accounts of the murder quickly took on fantastic and exaggerated elements in the retelling, but the risk of attacks from the natives was real. A plot to have the Schuyler family murdered in their home by an Indian brave was averted at the final moment only because the Iroquois man said that he could not finally kill a man at whose table he had eaten.

  In the spring of 1777, John Carter was still in Albany, too, and from Kitty and Philip’s perspective it was the worst timing. The girls had a new heartthrob, a young captain named Richard Varick, their father’s military secretary. Kitty warmly supported him as a choice for one of her daughters. Richard and their cousin Henry Livingston were assigned the pleasant task, once the countryside grew safer, of escorting Angelica and Eliza back and forth between Albany and Saratoga, and the young people arrived in peals of laughter. Also charged by their father with rounding up deserters, Richard one day brought in a tailor turned soldier, and Eliza promptly joked that they should keep the deserter as a family captive and set him to work as her dressmaker. Before long, Richard Varick was practically a member of the family and given assignments such as finding new curtains for General Schuyler’s field bed and ferrying plant cuttings up to Saratoga for Eliza’s flower garden. Richard was, like the Schuyler and the Van Rensselaer families, from the New York Dutch community and spoke their language, both literally and figuratively. Here was the kind of man Kitty and Philip Schuyler would be glad to see one of the girls marry.

  Angelica and John Carter, however, were already exchanging passionate vows behind the backs of her parents. By spring, John was ardently pressing a besotted Angelica to run away from her father’s home with him. Angelica knew that her father took a dim view of Mr. Carter and his shady past. She remembered with a thrill, too, how exciting and romantic it had been when the governor’s daughter, Henrietta Moore, climbed over the gate of her father’s garrison to elope with her forbidden officer. Of course there were some blustery words. But the governor had forgiven Henrietta. Despite the risks, knowing that she would incur her father’s fury, in June 1777 Angelica agreed. She gambled—without calculating just how hurt her mother and father would be—that it would be better to ask for forgiveness than for permission. She may have realized, as well, that there might not long be an option. Angelica was not pregnant yet. But that she might be was no longer an impossibility either.

  John Carter arranged horses and a secret assignation. This time, Angelica told no one of her plans, not even Eliza. Eliza was glad for that later. She would have had to tell Papa.

  When Angelica saw John waiting at the end of the lane, she was giddy. She was also frightened. Angelica and John were not married, though marrying seems to have been the intention. But if John Carter did not follow through now, Angelica would be ruined. The fleeing couple made for the Van Rensselaer estate, which was spread out around Albany. The new “patroon” of the manor was Angelica’s thirteen-year-old cousin Stephen, who, despite his feudal title, was not old enough to help them. Angelica turned instead to her maternal grandfather, John Van Rensselaer, crying and proclaiming her father a heartless tyrant. Her grandfather had a different concern. Had the relationship already been consummated? Why was his granddaughter not already married? When the young Mr. Carter was quizzed about the state of the affair, it became clear that, whether General Schuyler liked it or not, there would have to be a wedding. The only question now was how to control the damage.

  Angelica’s grandfather immediately saw the runaway couple married on June 21 at the manor house. Then John Van Rensselaer set about the grim business of informing his daughter Kitty and son-in-law General Schuyler that their reckless eldest child was married to a man they detested.

  CHAPTER 4

  Angelica, 1777

  Eliza watched in awe as her father tossed into the fireplace Angelica’s letters, unread and unopened.

  Philip’s hands shook. Eliza had never seen her father so angry. Angelica and that bounder would never get a penny, Philip Schuyler tartly informed his father-in-law. The doors of this house were closed forever to Angelica.

  Poor Grandfather. He had come to broker peace, but Eliza could see the process was not going smoothly. Her mother wasn’t helping. While her father paced furiously, Kitty slumped in the corner, weeping. Eliza had never heard such harsh words from her mother either. Mother had already yelled at Grandfather, and that made Grandfather angry. When Eliza passed Prince or the other servants in the corridors, no one wanted to make eye contact, least of all Eliza.

  Would Papa forbid Angelica’s letters to her sisters too? Mother raged that Angelica was a bad influence. Eliza already knew she would never do something so foolhardy as run away from the Pastures. She guessed from the pathetic tone of Angelica’s letters that it was beginning to dawn on her that she had gambled unwisely. Eliza knew that her sister had spent most of the first days of her marriage crying.

  For the newlyweds, being cut off from Angelica’s parents’ home and, especially, from the Schuyler family fortune posed a serious and deeply unpleasant dilemma.

  John Carter did not have a fortune. He did not have the money to support a wife, let alone a wife from a wealthy background. John had a position in the army, but he was not financially independent. He had pursued Angelica, in part, because of her family’s wealth and connections in America and had counted on the generosity of her father. Philip Schuyler, however, not only planned to cut Angelica out of a share of the family inheritance but was not inclined to support his disobedient and now-married daughter with a private income or marriage settlement.

  No one had broken the worst news of all yet to Philip Schuyler either. John Carter was, as Eliza’s father had feared, an imposter.

  John Carter was not a British spy. That was some consolation, at least, to Philip Schuyler. Eliza’s grandfather had extracted most of the sorry story from the young man already. John Carter confessed that his real name was John Church, and he hastened to reassure John Van Rensselaer that he did come from a wealthy mercantile background in London, from a family not unlike the Schuyler family. He was a gentleman in his tastes and education.

  Just not a gentleman in his conduct then. Philip Schuyler was not moved so far by this story.

  The rest of the story behind John Church’s flight from Britain and his transformation into John Carter did nothing to endear Angelica’s new husband further to Philip or Kitty, although it did have some stock romantic elements to thrill the young ladies. John Church was orphaned at a young age; his guardian was a wealthy uncle in London: John Barker, an important man in the insurance and sugar trade in the West Indies. John wanted desperately as a lad, so the story went, to join the British army and dreamed of adventure. His stern uncle took a dim view of such an unsteady occupation and insisted that John work in the trading house of a rich neighboring merchant, whose daughter and only child was a plain, dull young lady less than charitably described as having “nothing remarkable to distinguish her save her gilding.” The work was boring, and so was the merchant’s daughter.

  At first, John obeyed his uncle’s orders. The tedium, though, was unrelenting. He wasn’t cut out for the countinghouse and insurance contracts. He was a wealthy young man with rich, fast friends, and he wanted some excitement. So he toiled days for the m
erchant and his uncle and at night threw himself into wild parties.

  Partying in London in the 1760s and 1770s mostly meant running riot in bawdy houses and participating in high-stakes gambling. John soon managed to lose 10,000 pounds—the modern equivalent of more than $1.5 million—in the aristocratic gambling dens in the capital and in reckless stock-market speculation. Certain that he would win big and more than repay the stakes, John had “borrowed” the money from his uncle’s business accounts, and now faced a very thorny problem.

  Uncle Barker, furious, hit upon a solution to the problem of his wayward nephew and his mounting debts. He announced to John that it was high time for him to propose to the daughter of the rich business associate.

  John balked. The girl was not pretty enough for his fine tastes. She was not witty or funny. He would not marry her, John announced. His uncle retorted that a young man 10,000 pounds in debt was not in a position to be picky. In the standoff that followed, Uncle Barker washed his hands of his charge. He cut off John’s income and declined to bail out his feckless ward. By August 1774, bailiffs were on John’s tail, and the London newspapers were reporting that he was bankrupt.

  This was the story that John Carter had told Angelica and her grandfather. Unfortunately for Angelica, her father did not find his bold escape from a loveless marriage quite as romantic as she did. All Philip Schuyler saw was disobedience. Even more unfortunately for Angelica, John Church had also not yet come clean with the entire story and had glossed over some other unfortunate bits.

  Before fleeing Britain, the young John Church had also managed to get tangled up in a duel. Dueling was illegal, and it was never clear later which of the combatants ended up making a visit to the surgeon. Chances are it was John who was grazed by the bullet. His uncle wasn’t the only person from whom John had “borrowed” his gambling stake. Tongues still wagged, even a decade after his marriage to Angelica, that John had “entered into a partnership with another man, but then took 5000 guineas of the pair’s money and faked his own death before fleeing from England” under the assumed name of John Carter.

  John booked a transatlantic passage and fled his troubles. On his arrival in America, John then did what he’d wanted to do all along: he joined the army. The only army that was likely to take him—because he and British major John André were old schoolmates and his identity would have been uncovered in the British camp immediately—was that of the Americans. Conveniently, John decided at that point that he was an ardent supporter of the cause of the patriots.

  For a month, Eliza’s grandfather worked behind the scenes to calm the waters, and Eliza watched as her mother cried every night in the front parlor and her father’s jaw set tighter and tighter. There were fiery family conferences, and even from her refuge in the garden Eliza could hear angry voices. Grandfather John quietly pressed his daughter and his son-in-law to think of the fate that awaited Angelica, tied to a bitter, resentful, and cash-strapped imposter, if they refused to aid the young couple.

  Meanwhile, Angelica’s elopement was the talk of New York society all that first summer, causing Eliza and her family keen embarrassment. Letters with the news were flying. One of Eliza’s cousins reported,

  Dear Alice, Gr. Grandfather Trumbull writes his wife as follows, Albany, 30 June 1777, Monday last Miss Angelica Schuyler became Mrs. Carter. The Ceremony passed at the Manor without the knowledge of Parents—the new married couple came to Town Wednesday following—have not yet been to her Father’s House nor seen her Mother—they remain at Grand Papa’s over the River. This the News of Town.

  When Philip Schuyler finally permitted the couple to return to the family home, it may have been as much to quash the gossip as anything else. Angelica parading through Albany on the arm of her new husband, just a few miles from the Pastures, was impossible to ignore, and already the tittle-tattle had spread as far as relatives in Manhattan.

  By July, Philip and Kitty were worn down and relented. As Philip Schuyler explained to William Duer, the man who had introduced John to the family: “unacquainted with his Family, his Connections, and Situation in Life the match was exceedingly disagreeable to me.” However, Philip Schuyler went on, “as there is no undoing this Gordian Knot . . . I frowned, I made them humble themselves, forgave, and called them home.”

  The chilly reception and the groveling apologies Angelica’s father demanded of the couple should have been a hint to John and Angelica not to inflame the situation. It was certainly enough to persuade Eliza that she would never marry except with her papa’s permission. Neither John nor Angelica, however, ever showed much sense in matters of finances or diplomacy. John, who took a liberal view of his right to the money of other people, considered that he was entitled to a share of the family fortune as a marriage portion. He was a man who took what he wanted from life without so much as a by-your-leave and thought it enough afterward to smooth any ruffled feathers with a gallant thank-you. That others saw this as underhanded and manipulative he could never fathom. His young wife, on the other hand, was simply spoiled. It had never occurred to Angelica that she would need to think about money. Papa had always paid for everything.

  Angelica and John, having no home of their own, now moved into the Schuyler family home in Albany, and the tension was soon unbearable. The newlyweds immediately began running up extravagant bills, expecting Angelica’s increasingly irate father to pay them. A day after first being permitted to meet his new in-laws, in what went down in family lore as a famously cold welcome, John Carter picked up the pen and passed a pleasant morning placing orders for luxury items at his father-in-law’s expense. “Mrs. Carter requests you to buy her 5 or 6 Pounds of Hyson Tea, be the Price what it will,” he blithely instructed in one letter. Angelica wanted “a set of strings for her Guitar and two setts of upper G Strings.” He placed the order for those too. Other requests quickly followed.

  The impertinence of the order for a half-dozen pounds of tea was especially rich given the economic uncertainty at the start of the American Revolution and what tea represented. The “American” dollar was just six months old in the summer of 1777, and its value was plummeting. Wartime inflation was running in the double digits, and even rich men like Philip Schuyler were short of ready money and watching their wealth vanish on paper. When John placed his order for tea—“be the Price what it will”—a barrel of the precious leaves cost the modern equivalent of about $3,500. By the time that order arrived, two months later, the cost had risen to well over $5,000. By the summer of 1778, a year on, the cost would approach $30,000, as the American currency entered what some feared was a death spiral.

  John Carter, though, didn’t worry about such trifles. When the bill arrived in the autumn, John dashed off a quick note, assuring his creditors, “The General will pay you for them when you come here, and any other sum you have been so kind as to lay out for me.” As one biographer of John Carter trenchantly observes, “Whether or not Schuyler had agreed to assume Carter’s debts in addition to his married daughter’s is not clear, but knowing the initial antagonism that existed between Schuyler and his son-in-law it seems safe to assume that Carter was being presumptuous.”

  There were constant quarrels all that summer at the Pastures. Eliza felt sorry for her mother, who still felt deeply wounded by Angelica’s betrayal and showed it. Kitty snapped, and Angelica pouted. No one much appreciated Peggy’s wry and witty running commentary. Angelica put on new airs as a married woman, and, as John downed one generous glass of her father’s expensive Madeira after another, Eliza fled them all and retreated to the gardens or the stables. It was enough to give anyone a headache.

  General Schuyler was away more often than not as the summer wore on and, thankfully, was spared witnessing the greatest incursions into his wine cellar. Had he been home, there surely would have been fireworks—but he had his own fireworks to contend with. The battle with the British general John Burgoyne and the climax of the Saratoga campaign at Ticonderoga were barreling toward the American
s in July.

  Papa’s safety was a constant worry. General Schuyler was a high-value target, with a price on his head already. A native assassin nearly succeeded in claiming the bounty that month when Eliza’s father was at Saratoga. Only a household slave catching a glint of metal reflected in the light of the fireplace, and, with great presence of mind, calling out for help from imaginary sentinels prevented Philip Schuyler from being murdered in his bed by the intruder. Worry kept everyone edgy. The Schuyler girls at home all lived with the knowledge that another attack on the family in Albany might come at any moment. Eliza was alert to even the smallest sounds outside her window, and armed guards patrolled the manor house as a military compound.

  The campaign in Ticonderoga was not going well for the Americans. Defeat was not impossible. What then would become of them? In the back of everyone’s mind was the terrible sentence that had been handed down to William Prendergast for treason. The American rebels understood clearly that, if their cause failed, the price would be monstrous. The British were gaining ground, and when word came that they had taken the peak at Sandy Hill, Eliza knew enough to be frightened. From there, the route to the entire Hudson River lay open to them.

  Philip Schuyler, from his campaign outpost in the north, already saw clearly that his estate at Saratoga lay in the path of the British. The general composed a hasty letter to his wife and sent a messenger racing across the countryside to Albany. The letter reached Kitty and the girls at the Pastures at the end of July, and Kitty’s hand went to her throat as she read the words. The British could not be stopped from reaching Saratoga.

  Eliza marveled at her mother’s composure now. Kitty Schuyler was the wife of a soldier, and she had lived her life on the edge of the wilderness. Although her career was as a mother and mistress of a domestic estate, as her youngest daughter later remembered, “she possessed courage and prudence in a great degree.” Well, if the British army could not be stopped from reaching the family summer estates, then Kitty Schuyler was determined to make sure that they would not find there anything of use or value. She, too, could thwart the British. Kitty scribbled a quick note to Philip and ordered a servant to prepare the fast coach and to harness four of the family’s horses. An armed servant mounted the seat beside her, prepared to deal with anyone who tried to stop her. Leaving the older girls in charge of the estate and reminding them to check the locks on the doors carefully, Kitty Schuyler set off in a cloud of dust for Saratoga.