Hamilton, Angelica, 1784-1857

Angelica Hamilton (September 25, 1784 – February 6, 1857) was the second child and eldest daughter of Elizabeth Schuyler and Alexander Hamilton, who was the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Angelica was described as a sensitive, lively and musical girl in her youth. She was said to resemble, in beauty, her maternal aunt Angelica Schuyler Church, for whom she was named.[2] During her father's time as Secretary of the Treasury, Martha Washington would take Angelica with her to dance lessons along with her own children.[2] In November 1801, when Angelica was 17 years old, her oldest brother Philip Hamilton died of injuries resulting from a duel with George I. Eacker. The news of Philip's death precipitated a mental breakdown that left Angelica in a state described as "eternal childhood", and often unable even to recognize family members.[2]

Angelica's nephew, psychiatrist Allan McLane Hamilton, described his aunt as an "invalid" and her condition as a type of "insanity".[5] Dr. Hamilton wrote, "Upon receipt of the news of her brother's death in the Eacker duel, she suffered so great a shock that her mind became permanently impaired, and although taken care of by her devoted mother for a long time there was no amelioration in her condition."[3]

Though the details of what occurred are not clear from a modern medical perspective, historian Ron Chernow similarly attributed the sudden and extreme deterioration of Angelica's mental health to her reaction to the death of Philip, with whom she had been very close.[2] Other modern authors have described the mental health problem, which lasted for the rest of Angelica's life, without discussion of causation.[6][7]

Despite her parents' best efforts to reach her, Angelica's condition only seemed to worsen. Her father had written his friend Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and asked him to send Angelica watermelons and three parakeets, as she was "very fond of birds".[2][8] After visiting the Hamilton home, James Kent tactfully described Angelica as having "a very uncommon simplicity and modesty of deportment".[2] In 1848, Angelica's sister Eliza Hamilton Holly moved their 91-year-old mother Elizabeth from New York to Washington, D.C.,[9] where she died in 1854 at age 97. Elizabeth Hamilton requested in her will that her other children be "kind, affectionate, and attentive" to her "unfortunate daughter Angelica."[2] Eliza Holly, in a letter to an aunt anticipating Angelica's death, remarked that their mother had not wished to outlive Angelica, and wrote, "Poor sister, what a happy release will be hers! Lost to herself half a century."[2]

Three years after her mother's death, in February 1857, Angelica died in New York at age 72. She was buried in Westchester County, New York at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.