Hamilton's Notes in His Pay Book of the New York State Artillery Company

Abstract

* The author of this paper wishes to acknowledge the kindnesses extended by Dr. David C. Mearns, Chief of the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress, and the librarians of the Division, in the examination of the Hamilton manuscripts. 1 Berthold Fernow, ed., Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New York (Albany, N. Y., I887), XV, 84. 2 Hamilton to the Provisional Congress of New York, May 26, July 26, and August, 1776, in Henry Cabot Lodge, ed., The Works of Hamilton (New York, i886), VII, 473-76; this work hereafter cited as Works (Lodge). For the few biographical data included in this paper see the Hamilton Collection in the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress. See also any of the less unbiased biographies of Hamilton, or those where prejudice at least stems from family relationship rather than political attitudes, such as John Church Hamilton, The Life of Hamilton (New York, I840); his Life of Hamilton, A History of the Republic of the United States of America as Traced in His Writings and in Those of His Contemporaries (Boston, I879); Allan McLane Hamilton, The Intimate Life of Hamilton (New York, i8io). 3 Until the appearance of Harold Larson's Alexander Hamilton: The Fact and Fiction of His Early Years, William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., IX (April, 1952), I39-51, the year 1757 had been conventionally accepted as Hamilton's birth date. Since no official records of his birth have been found, the controversy around Hamilton's age had been settled, in a manner, on the basis of Hamilton's own statement in Hamilton to Hamilton [in Scotland], Albany, N. Y., May 2, I797, in Works (Lodge), VIII, 463. There Hamilton implies the year I757 or I756 as his birth date. After the documentary evidence, however, presented in the above study by Larson, it seems proper to correct Hamilton's year of birth from a757 to I755. See also William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., XII (April, 1955), 330-32.