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I do not know and cannot recall coming across further details that would answer this specific question about Philip Bradstreet Schuyler (1788-1865) - two sources provide accounts that I know of: Catherine Schuyler by Mary Gay Humphreys (pg 229):

John Bradstreet, the eldest son, to whom the estate of Saratoga was given, had married Elizabeth Van Rensselaer, the sister of the Patroon Stephen, the husband of Margaret Schuyler. His married life was brief. He died a few years after, leaving a boy, Philip, to be the representative of the name. This boy was sent to the Hamiltons', and with young Cortland Schuyler and the Hamilton boys went to Bishop Moore's school for boys on Staten Island, returning to New York Friday evenings to spend Sundays with the Hamiltons.

and then this website that has alot more about his adult life:

PHILIP SCHUYLER, 2D.

Philip Schuyler, 2d, was seven years of age when his father, John Bradstreet [Schuyler], died.  His grandfather, the General, was appointed his guardian, who first placed him in a school on Staten Island, under the charge of Dr. Moore, afterwards Bishop of Virginia, and later he was sent to Columbia College.  During his collegiate course he lived in New York, and for part of the time in the family of his talented uncle, Alexander Hamilton; a rare privilege, that, for a young man in the formative period of his life.

[The Dr. Moore mentioned above was Richard, not Benjamin - the latter was the Episcopal Bishop of NY who was at AH's deathbed.]

The various P. Schuyler grandchildren, as minors, are difficult to trace, and this isn't helped by the destruction of most letters to P. Schuyler. But what does seem obvious is that they, including the Hamilton children, were often in the care of other family members and the whole family's lives were very intertwined - its not only PB Schuyler, but P Schuyler daughters Cornelia and Catherine and their brothers and brothers-in-law staying with the Hamiltons at various times.

Thank you and I hope you’re doing well:)

I have never looked into JCH's finances and have not read an account by a historian who has, but I believe the informal consensus is that he lived off of his wife's inherited wealth. Maria Eliza van den Heuvel was the daughter of Jan Cornelis van den Heuvel and (maternal side) great-granddaughter of Charles Apthorp, both very wealthy merchants. Just the 1827 sale and division of her father's Bloomingdale property would have netted her about $100k (today's money) - and that's just the mansion and farm.

It is notable that Alex and James A., the latter especially, note having to make their way in the world without much money when starting out, so JCH's assumed financial independence through his wife may have caused some resentment, especially as it afforded him time to be the interpreter of their father's legacy. The dynamics between the oldest brothers are definitely weird.

John and Angelica S. Church are not a couple I've looked into that much independent of what's generally out there in the public domain - the easily accessible stuff. On tumblr, I think @runawayforthesummer accumulated the most information and was one of the tumblr leaders of the Justice for John Church! group (tired of the way he'd been ignored or smeared, for what doesn't seem to be tangible reasons, by both Hamilton historians and the Hamilton musical fandom). I've mentioned Tom Cutterham's planned book featuring Angelica as a way of exploring several concepts of the Early Republic (I believe he is looking for a publisher) and the articles/podcast episode he's released. Please see his paper (“A Wife and a Mother Has No Business to Be So Well Dressed”: Gender, Class, and Dynasty in the Revolutionary Republic) published last year (2023). Cassandra Good also discusses Angelica in Founding Friendships (2016).

This may help for some general stuff about them:

Church children - almost as soon as they return to the U.S., their youngest, Richard Stephen (who also went by Richard Stephen Hamilton) was conceived - I bring this up not only for circumstantial evidence about their marriage, but because he named his own two sons Alexander and Philip Schuyler, haha. And to keep these family names really confusing, Philip Church (b 1778) ALSO names his son (b 1824) Richard Stephen Church.

Elizabeth Matilda Church Bunner and her siblings, with a link to Funicello's brief article about the Churches.

Church (very briefly) and Hamilton weddings (this has a link to some of Cutterham's work on Angelica)

Some Angelica writing to Eliza, just for fun

What I know about the Churches: they eloped*, so they were obviously pretty hot for each other at one point. They had either 7 or 8 children (depending on whether there was a stillborn/infant death Angelica around 1786-7) and 2-3 of those children (Richard Hamilton, possibly that Angelica, and Alexander Hamilton) died young, so they experienced those losses together. We have Angelica's letter to AH from 1787 where she states: "I do not write by this packet to either of my sisters, nor to my father. It is too Meloncholy an employment to day, as church is not here to be my consolation," so Angelica wrote about her husband at that time as emotionally supportive.

I don't know of any evidence that they were not happily married. Sure, Angelica was homesick 1785-97, but she also understood sensibility and sentimentality and knew how to be emotionally dramatic in the way that was expected from clever gentlewomen for this time period - one can see it in her letters to others, too. Language like "I do not know how long I can bear to be apart from you and I wish I could show you how much I love you" was a feature of correspondence - I think of it as akin to today's memes. She also knew that this kind of language helped shore up ties with her family and extended her/their influence.

My take is that the Church marriage may get a bad rap for a few reasons:

1) the issue of letters - the Churches' correspondence is harder to access - it's more scattered both in U.S. institutions and French/British ones. Even most of the letters Church must have sent Hamilton (and as Hamilton was his lawyer and agent, there had to have been a number of letters; they'd probably known each other since 1777, certainly since 1779) are missing, but Church would have had ample opportunity to go through that correspondence. Also, I'm not sure how much, if any correspondence there was between John and Angelica that survived - they were usually together, and when you consider that we know about the loving relationships of the Adams, Jays, and Hamiltons based on their correspondence (even if one-sided in the case of the Hamiltons), the lack of (surviving) letters in the public domain between them leaves a void. And of note, as homesick as Angelica expresses herself to be, she does stay with her husband - she goes more than seven and a half years without seeing her extended family!

2) I'm entirely speculating, but I also think Angelica Church's role in Amhistory was deliberately downplayed (Powel's and Bingham's certainly was) - Cutterham and Good's research reveal her to be quite canny in currying favor and helping her family's political career(s). Folks may read her performative flirtatiousness as the desperate attempts of a romantically neglected woman to get some action, instead of the clever writings of a genteel woman who knew this type of interaction was how women could advance politically. (Remember how she tries to convince AH to help her father get the British ambassadorship?) She played a role in the attempted escape of Lafayette, she knew Talleyrand and many other diplomats and politicians, she hung out in British court (JC was a member of Parliament, which would have also required her political skill to accomplish), and we certainly know she kept a correspondence with Jefferson, and possibly Washington (among many others). So the love/heartsick Angelica with a horrible husband narrative seems to be a slam on a politically astute woman of that period who knew how to play the cards that were dealt. Again, see Cutterham's article for concerns about Republican women, and the use of sexuality for dynastic pursuits.

3. J Church is a bit inscrutable two centuries on. The man went by a fake name for about 10 years! He is described as a risk-taking (yes), gambling (yes), ambitious (certainly), philandering (um) man of business (yes), the largest insurance underwriter (maybe), uninterested in his wife (um). From what I recall, and I cannot remember which historian first interpreted language in a letter from G. Morris to AH that Morris was gossiping that JChurch was fooling around with the hired help (this would have been in the early 1790s when Morris was in France). But he moves back to America for her, unless he was so concerned about his business interests there, but there's ample evidence that he was enmeshed with her life/her family's life and shared goals to believe that his support for his wife was totally sincere - somewhere there's a reference to the insane amount of money he loaned/gave the Hamiltons (over $700,000?), besides AH's assumption that his brother-in-law would help support them no matter what, anyway. (Hamilton and Church's support of each other was certainly not based on just emotional attachment - they were sharing and securing wealth and influence.) And AH describes him in positive terms: "a man of fortune & integrity—of strong mind, very exact very active & very much a man of business. He is about fifty but of uncommon strength of constitution." AH to Wolcott 2June1798

In American sources upon their return the U.S. in 1797, there are some indications that the Churches are perceived as flaunting their wealth; there are some diary entries/correspondence between a woman or two implying that Angelica is perceived as vain (see also the article I linked above by Cutterham for more about these attitudes), but the scant evidence we have does seem to indicate that they were a couple (with JChurch spending a lot of time hanging out with AHamilton, too - they show a very deep loyalty to each other). The only evidence I could use to speculate about the state of their marriage in the negative is: 1) her homesickness; 2) that she traveled by herself to America in 1789 and spent nine months there - there's some implication that Church told her she needed to come home, but I don't recall where that came from. Other than that, they seem pretty united in their goals in life, both making compromises/sacrifices for the other's happiness/goals - her for his political career (maybe - I'm not convinced she didn't play up her homesickness a bit), his for her desire to be close to her family and serve her family's interests - and J Church clearly found it a worthwhile endeavor to support the Hamiltons in numerous ways.

The good thing about the Churches is that whether through Cutterham, Good, or other researchers, there is clearly more to learn about them and more sources out there that have been underexplored.

*Angelica was incensed when her daughter Catharine eloped with Bertram Peter Cruger in 1802; she refused to speak to them. Oh, the irony!

I'm going to beat this dead horse some more.

In checking to see whether any new records have been discovered about James Hamilton, Jr (if that was his name - Peter Lavien thought it might be 'Robert,' haha), born 1751 or 1753 or some point in the 1750s, who may have been apprenticed as a carpenter (Ramsing) and who engaged in some occupation where AH thought he could be set up on a farm (AH's letter to his brother), I didn't find anything!

But I did find one fairly recent article stating James Hamilton Sr. abandoned his family shortly after AH was born, and I just wonder where folks get this stuff? It's one thing to state "unknown," and another to totally make something up. And there's reasoning, beyond just lack of evidence, that this bothers me so much.

I'd like to reflect on why it's popular for some historians to state that James Hamilton abandoned his family:

It allows them to create a narrative where AH was desperate for a father figure and this psychological motivation plays out in his relationship with GWashington. Spoiler: there's really nothing to point to in order to assert that AH was looking for a father figure/sought out approval from an older, paternal figure. From his correspondence, he was happy with the father he did have, and the person he played a son to was Philip Schuyler.

It says something about their own attitude towards financial misfortune. AH states in at least four different letters to different people (based on my recall) that his father fell into great misfortune and his affairs were wrecked, or that he tried but could not achieve great success, or something along those lines. He was "too generous, too easy of temper, too much pride, too large a portion of indolence." But it's never that his father just up and abandoned him.

(Let's limit this to just middle-class Americans) It takes very little - the loss of a job while living in a location not conducive to finding another job, a physical accident, a medical illness, a natural disaster - for someone to end up in crippling debt that they never recover from financially. According to Newton's research, James Hamilton may have spent part of his time running from debt collectors, and then may have taken any odd job he could. But being in a bad financial situation is not a moral failing, no matter how much the editor of National Review (Brookhiser) and a former WSJ writer and biographer of JP Morgan and Rockefeller (Chernow) may believe it.

Two things that can stall a financial slide and prevent destitution are 1) family wealth; 2) ability to draw on equity/credit. Rachel Faucette had both: her relatives were wealthy, and she was a slave owner who could use those enslaved persons as collateral and rent out their labor. James Hamilton apparently had neither. But that doesn't make him a horrible father who abandoned his kids.

This leads to some interesting speculation I came across - one researcher casually mentioning that given the circumstances of Rachel's divorce, James Hamilton Sr. would have had to adopt his sons to legitimize them. (This type of event - having to petition to adopt an illegitimate child that was the product of a long-term but illicit relationship, actually happened in my own family about 175 years ago - there's an official act of the state legislature of this adoption). And this made me think:

There's decent speculation that James Hamilton ran out of money/opportunities in Statia in 1765, which is what led him to St. Croix in 1765 to act as a debt collector for his employer.

Rachel and their two sons move there either that year, or certainly by 1766 (we can locate AH in St. Croix in 1766) but he cannot be counted in a census with the family, or perhaps even live with the family, because of the restrictions on Rachel (not clear that this was the case under Danish colonial law).

When Rachel dies intestate, custody of his sons likely would have gone to her nearest relatives - her son Peter Lavien, and then her Faucette relatives like the Lyttons (her sister's family).

And that James Hamilton Sr likely didn't have legal rights to his sons, but nevertheless does try to settle on another Caribbean island and have property, possibly thinking that they could join him at some point (if their affairs went to wreck, too) makes me feel a certain way. This narrative by conservative historians to paint James, living in the even harsher 18th century, as a neglectful father because he couldn't get on a solid footing financially and was in a decade plus relationship with a woman with whom - after they'd already had two kids - it was determined by a St. Croix court that they could not legitimize the union or children in anyway - is really f'ed up, and tells one a lot more about the worldview of those historians than it tells us about the relationship between James and his son(s).

Good question. From one perspective - the data is the data; even if Newton is horribly wrong about many things, unless he's being duplicitous in his discoveries (hello Wakefield), there's no reason to not cite him in the findings of source materials. Newton provides photos, references where his discoveries are available for others to peruse, and so forth, so if you have the access, you too could confirm what the court records from St Croix state, or that the McHenry poem is mis-dated and we don't know which of AH's friends attended his wedding, etc.

On the other hand, you can also reject Newton's interpretations, and he's such a dry writer that it's very easy to tell what the source states vs how he interprets it. Like, you can cite all his work showing how much money A. Mitchell gave her cousin AH, but not cite this as "she was probably his largest benefactor," the way Newton interprets it. For me, Newton sometimes shows such confidence in the testimony in his sources that he doesn't allow for enough speculation - like when Rachel's sister testifies to the ages of her nephews and Newton then concludes that the children were born between x and y. I'm not inclined to take so seriously someone's testimony about how old she thinks her nephews to be as to give their birthdates between x and y.

Unless Newton is up to even grosser stuff recently, I also consider his views not in the category of making him a total write-off, in the way that the old joke goes where a person states, "I've started reading Mein Kampf, and I think there are some good ideas there."

I don't know, although I don't think we have several sources confirming when Fanny left the Hamilton household that may not be referencing each other - I believe it's James A. Hamilton's Reminiscences cited in stating that after 10 years (when she was 12) she resided with her sister's family, and The Life of Arthur Tappan confirming the same.

Fanny was the youngest of (at least?) 6 siblings, and belonged to a large family with a number of acquaintances, so perhaps she was, at times, in the care of others. Her own connection to Albany (below) can lead one to conjecture that Fanny may have stayed with others when the Hamilton kids were moving back and forth between Philadelphia or NYC and Albany.

Mary (Manette (Maria)) Antill (b 1771), the sister who both sources confirm took Fanny in at some later point, married Rev War vet Col Gerrit G Lansing (b 1760) in 1786 in Albany*, so it's possible that she was in her sister's care earlier than those sources state, or at least stayed with her for periods. Gerrit Lansing also served under AH at Yorktown. The Lansings were a well-known family in Albany - Gerrit's brother, John Ten Eyck Lansing Jr, was Albany's mayor in 1786, one of the two other NY delegates, a noted anti-Federalist, and so on. How the Hamiltons' care for Fanny fit within her sister's connection to the Lansing family is something we don't know.

A letter from Philip Schuyler to EH mentioning the children in 1792 or 3 also only lists the "dear boys" and "Angelica," as I recall. Whether that's because Fanny wasn't actually with them and spent time with her sister Mary in Albany, or it was a convention to not include her, I'm not certain.

I think the only thing that becomes a bit clearer with this new information is that it becomes stronger to support the claim that Fanny's father specifically wanted her in the care of the Hamiltons, and that her mother too (given they chose EH as godmother of their youngest children) would have supported that.

One could also wonder why, if the 1797 date is correct, did she thereafter permanently reside with her sister? Does this have to do with the stability of her Lansing sister, who is now 26 (instead of 16 and newly married) or of that household? Isn't there a historian who seriously opined that it was because of Callendar's publication of the Reynolds allegations? But I don't think we have any sources for that timing.

I think this is the same anon:

Are you a historian? Because you are so smart and organized in your thoughts! I know you probably don't want to dox yourself but I was just wondering!

Thank you for the compliments! No, I'm not a historian - I have never published scholarly articles in a history field under my real name. I'm a (published) scientist who has also worked in the legal field, and nosy folks I've worked with google my name (and admit it!), so I try to stay mindful of my public footprint and what contributions are "appropriate" for an association given the topics I'm professionally supposed to be discussing (not like someone couldn't dox me on here and on other blogs if they were determined enough - I'm not famous or anything, though).

I'm a strong self-critic, and I think a lot of my earlier posts were much better sourced than my last 50 or so, so I really do appreciate that it's still readable and seems organized!

I've previously admitted here that an ex-partner is a historian (not of AmRev or the early AmRepub), so I know something not only of the research methodology (and that I've done time at the U.S. National Archives!) but of the publishing pressures to be a good communicator. Particularly for public-facing literature, there's a lot of emphasis placed on being a good writer, which isn't just that you can form a sentence, but that you have a strong style. For material meant for a more general audience - my ex has authored a handful of books, one of which is a true tome - there was a strong expectation that one nevertheless follow the rules of fiction writing/drama - plot elements, characterization, etc, again with a strong writing flair/voice - even though these are non-fiction volumes on historical events (in ex's case). Whether one's pitch got accepted depended on your strengths in this other area, which doesn't necessarily align with being a strong scholar. And even though my ex was widely known as one of the subject matter experts in that niche field and had contracts to act as a consultant and so on, it wasn't until they published a (well-received) book meant for a general audience that they got invitations from the most prestigious venues and a lecture shared on C-SPAN, etc.

[Here's a search for all my posts with Hogeland in them.]

Ohh, The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding is finally coming out at the end of this month (May 2024) - I've been following Hogeland discussing it for several years!

Hogeland is not at all interested in Alexander Hamilton as a persona (most AmRev and early American historians aren't), but as a policy maker and creator of the federal govt and financial system. And he's sharply critical.

Hogeland and Robert Sullivan (author of the 2016 Harper's magazine cover article "The Hamilton Cult: Has the celebrated musical eclipsed the main himself?", which also quotes Hogeland, will be discussing the book at the National Archives on May 16th, 1-2 pm EDT.

I think this quote from Hogeland in the above linked article is key to his approach:

" 'But it’s just the icing on the cake of this industry that’s existed for decades now, trying to promote Hamilton as something other than what he actually was.” The duel with Burr, his relationship with his wife and his mistress — these are rich material for a narrative biography, Hogeland concedes, but in terms of Hamilton’s impact on the formation and the very nature of the United States, they are little more than footnotes. “Accidents,” he calls them. They lead us to overlook what Hamilton thought was his own purpose in life. "

Blurb: "William Hogeland is the best guide I have found to understanding how we today are, for good and evil, children of Alexander.” ―J. Bradford DeLong, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Kirkus review:

A lively if overlong history of the origins of federal power.

Do you have some historians that you think do a good job? I noticed that even Joanne Freeman who I think is a relatively nonbiased, good historian, also sometimes talks about Hamilton's childhood and actions in similar ways. Self destructive, flying off the handle, etc.

For AH biographers, I still consider Broadus Mitchell the gold standard.

I don't want to trash Freeman - I think a lot of her work is outstanding, but she also has a historian public persona that I don't think leads her to well-reasoned takes in public discussions. (Annette Gordon-Reed, in contrast, is more sober.)

More often than not, the saying that you learn more about the biographer than you do about the subject heavily applies in AH biographies. I think folks could get a lot more from historians who are not interested in Hamilton as a persona/personal figure and who are instead engaged in political, financial, and/or legal aspects. They're the ones who often come through with a lot of citations and more context - the work is altogether more scholarly, in a way that Hamilton biographies aren't. These works sometimes get some personal facts about AH wrong, too, but as what AH left us with is his work, that's where one needs to continue to go, IMO, then branch out to more of the works covering the Anglo-American world in the late 18th century. From 2021-23, I read 13 new books that discussed AH's policy in some way, and it was great just seeing the expansiveness of how people discuss AH as part of what may be their scholarly study/approach into another area. That's also, IMO, how one can really start to self-correct from just accepting agenda-driven AH biographies.

Empire of Liberty by Gordon S. Wood (2009) - just reading the back and forth about Wood's take vs others' is really useful for seeing the narratives surrounding the way the history of the early republic is written.

Alexander Hamilton’s Public Administration by Richard T. Green (2020)

Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher became an Icon of American Capitalism by Glory M. Liu (2021)