TO THE MEMORY OF

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

THE CORPORATION OF TRINITY HAVE ERECTED THIS MONUMENT IN TESTIMONY OF THEIR RESPECT FOR THE PATRIOT OF INCORRUPTIBLE INTEGRITY THE SOLDIER OF APPROVED VALOUR THE STATESMAN OF CONSUMMATE WISDOM

WHOSE TALENTS AND VIRTUES WILL BE ADMIRED BY GRATEFUL POSTERITY LONG
AFTER THIS MARBLE SHALL HAVE MOULDERED TO DUST

HE DIED JULY 12TH 1804, AGED 47

NOTES

PAGE XI.  “Nevis” is pronounced Neevis.

PAGE 3.  Of the Gingerland estate nothing remains to-day but a negro hamlet named Fawcett.  Its inhabitants are, beyond a doubt, the descendants of slaves belonging to Hamilton’s grandparents, for there is no trace of any other family named Fawcett in the Common Records of Nevis.

PAGE 6.  This deed of separation is entered in the Common Records of Nevis, 1725-1746, page 429, and is dated the fifth day of February, 1740.

PAGE 11.  I have hesitated over the spelling of the name Levine.  John Church Hamilton, in his life of Hamilton, spells it Lavine, and in one of Hamilton’s letters, page 7, Vol. 11, of this same Life, it is spelt in the same manner.  But four times in the Records of St. Croix it is spelt Levine.  The half-brother to whom Hamilton refers in his letter had himself baptized in Christianstadt in the year 1769, and the entry reads:  Peter, son of John Michael and Rachael Levine.  In the interment entry of Rachael Levine it is spelt in this fashion, and in the government records of Levine’s business transactions.  It seems to me probable that in copying Hamilton’s letter the name was misspelled, and although he no doubt mentioned the name freely to his family, it is possible that he did not write it upon any other occasion.  I have, therefore, used the method for which there is a considerable authority.

PAGE 29.  James Hamilton was the fourth son of Alexander Hamilton, Laird of Grange, and his wife, Elizabeth (eldest daughter of Sir Robert Pollock), who were married about 1730.  The Hamiltons of Grange belonged to the Cambuskeith branch of the great house of Hamilton, and the founder of this branch, in the fourteenth century, was Walter de Hamilton, a son of Sir Gilbert de Hamilton, who was the common ancestor of the Dukes of Hamilton, the Dukes of Abercorn, Earls of Haddington, Viscounts Boyne, Barons Belhaven, several extinct peerages, and of all the Scotch and Irish Hamilton families.  He was fifth in descent from Robert, Earl of Mellent, created by Henry I, Earl of Leicester, who married a granddaughter of King Henry I of France and his Queen, who was a daughter of Jeroslaus, Czar of Russia.  See “The Lineage of Alexander Hamilton,” in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Review, for April, 1889, or “The Historical and Genealogical Memoirs of the House of Hamilton, with Genealogical Memoirs of Several Branches of the Family,” by John Anderson, Edinburgh, 1825, a copy of which is to be found in the British Museum.  In the latter work, against the name of James Hamilton, is the following statement:  A proprietor in the West Indies, and father of Alexander Hamilton, the celebrated statesman and patriot in the United States of America, who fell, greatly regretted, in a duel with a Mr. Burr.