- Alexander Hamilton, the $10 Founding Father
was one of George Washington's closest advisers,
the author of most of the Federalist Papers,
and the first Secretary of the Treasury.
Fans of the musical "Hamilton",
and scholars of American history
know that Hamilton was born in the Caribbean,
survived a tough childhood and moved to colonial New York
on his own as a teenager.
However, new research on his early life has the potential
to turn our understanding of his biography on its head.
Dr. Andrew Porwancher, professor of History
at The University of Oklahoma
is currently authoring a book that discusses
whether Alexander Hamilton was born and raised Jewish.
Did the United States have a Jewish Founding Father?
The key to understanding Hamilton's Jewish identity
is this guy, the first husband of Hamilton's mother.
Rachel Faucette was born a Christian
on the Caribbean British islands of Nevis.
At the age of 16 Rachel's mother arranged her marriage
to a much older man Johann Michael Lavien,
on the Danish Island of St. Croix.
Marriages between Christians and Jews
were against Danish law at the time.
So Rachel would have been required
to convert to her husband's religion.
If Rachel Lavien converted to Judaism,
then Rabbinic law of matrilineal descent
dictates that all her children, including Alexander,
would be considered Jewish.
However, no one has yet found a conversion certificate
or a Ketubah, a Jewish marriage contract,
to prove any of this.
Prior Hamilton biographers have assumed Lavien was Christian
because there are no records on St. Croix
that indicate he was Jewish.
- I went through thousands of these Danish records,
and it turns out that Lavien was not identified as a Jew
in these records,
but all the other Jews were also not identified as Jews.
Lavien had been working as a merchant,
which was a typical Jewish profession at that time.
He himself had been working on Nevis,
which was home to a sizable Jewish community
in the Caribbean.
Lavien was disproportionately likely to conduct business
with Jews at a time when Jews
tended to conduct business among themselves.
And Hamilton's own grandson,
explicitly identified Lavien as a, "Rich Danish Jew."
Conversely, there's no record of anyone
explicitly identifying him as Christian.
And his name can be found under the spellings of Lewin,
Levian, Lavian, all of which are consistent
with how Jews of Levitic descent
spelled their surnames in the 18th century.
- A Levitic name is derived
from the ancient Hebrew tribe of Levi.
So most people who have these last names over the centuries
have tended to be Jewish.
However, it's important to note
that not every Levi is Jewish.
Rachel and Johann had a son, Peter,
and a deeply troubled marriage.
The breaking point arrived when Johann had Rachel imprisoned
for several months in terrible conditions
because he suspected her of adultery.
Upon her release, she fled from Johann
without formally divorcing him.
This meant she kept his last name
and could not legally remarry.
On the British Island of Nevis,
Rachel soon got into a longterm relationship
with James Hamilton, a Christian Scotsman
and had two children with him, James Jr. and Alexander.
And because the Rabbinic law of matrilineal descent
states that if Rachel was a Jewish convert,
all her children would be Jewish as well.
Additionally, because Rachel and James could not be married,
their children were considered illegitimate by law.
No doubt, Alexander spent the rest of his life
compensating for this perceived stain on his social status.
- Rachel chooses to enroll Alexander in a Jewish school.
Hamilton scholars have long known
that he attended this Jewish school.
They say he was born out of wedlock
and he couldn't be infant baptized,
and he must not have been able to attend the church school.
And this has been a longstanding assumption
among Hamilton scholars.
And it simply does not withstand scrutiny.
If you actually go through the church records, as I have,
you can find numerous instances,
both on Nevis and throughout the Caribbean
of children born out of wedlock who were infant baptized.
We have no grounds for assuming that Hamilton's illegitimacy
posed an obstacle to church membership for him.
The notion that a Christian child would attend
a Jewish school runs counter to everything we know
about Jewish-Christian relations in Nevis at this time.
- Jews and Christians
lived highly segregated lives.
And although Jews had gained some footholds
in the Caribbean, their status was always precarious.
When Alexander was 13,
he and Rachel contracted an unknown illness,
which killed her.
Alexander had barely recovered in time for her burial
on her family's land and not in a church cemetery.
While some Christians were buried on family land at the time
St. Croix did not have a Jewish cemetery.
So this private burial would have been Rachael's only option
if she were Jewish.
Alexander, who publicly identified as Christian
for his entire adult life,
is buried in Trinity Church, in New York City.
So, if Hamilton was born and raised Jewish,
how do we explain his transformation
from Caribbean Jewish day school boy
to Christian burial in New York?
- After his mother's death
with his familial and communal ties to Judaism severed,
likely had little incentive to compound his troubles
as a penniless orphan with a second class religious status.
He marries a very pious Christian woman in Eliza Schuyler.
He even gets a pew for her at Trinity Church in Manhattan.
And Hamilton never joins the church.
And if you go through the communion books
in Trinity Church, as I have,
you see Eliza's name in the records,
but never her husband's name.
- His Caribbean past
is always just under the surface.
He never identifies as Jewish,
but he builds a closer relationship
with the Jewish community than any Founding Father.
On his deathbed, Hamilton asks for communion.
- The rector of Trinity Church is actually resistant
to giving him communion
because Hamilton hasn't taken it before.
I think there's a couple different ways of viewing this.
One is that a man who had basically
no relationship with organized Christianity
his whole life, had suddenly come to embrace Jesus.
Another way to read that, which is more consistent
with Hamilton's history, is that perhaps Hamilton understood
that it would give his wife some measure of solace
amid the grief about to envelop her life
if he offered some profession of Christian faith
in his waning moments.
- So can we definitively say
that Alexander Hamilton was Jewish?
- Whenever you're talking about
18th century Caribbean history,
you're dealing with a fragmentary record.
Any claims you could make are probabilistic
rather than certain.
It's not the case that we can say definitively
that Alexander Hamilton was a Jew.
It's the strongest argument that can be made
based on the evidence available.
- Dr. Porwancher's research is ongoing.
His reevaluation of Hamilton's biography
and American history,
demonstrates how history has never settled.
It's always open to new evidence and new interpretations
that expand our understanding of the past.
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