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(Alexander Hamilton was born in Edinburgh, Scotland; gradu...)
Alexander Hamilton was born in Edinburgh, Scotland; graduated in 1737 from medical school and immigrated to Maryland in 1739. During this time colonial America was an evolving society. The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton is a primary source from which we gain insight to the societies and towns that formed the new English colonies in America around the 1740s. Dr. Hamilton joined his brother John, also a physician, in Maryland where he lived since 1720. He settled in Annapolis, where he became popular. Being a doctor did not prevent him from suffering of tuberculosis, which lead him to think that he would never get married. As a bachelor he embarked in a four month tour totaling 1,624 miles departing from Annapolis, visiting Maryland, Portsmouth, and New Hampshire. Dr. Hamilton travels transport us to life in the New England society of the mid eighteenth century. The influence of the European Enlightment was immense, even in America. New ideas, the printing press, the numerous industrial advances, and the steam machines, were mobilizing many to meet in public places and talk about what the present and future held for them in the horizon. Hamilton was enlightened with appreciation; however, he spent time observing other people's behaviors.
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Alexander Hamilton was born in 1712 in or near Edinburgh, Scotland, of a gentle and learned family. His father, Dr. William Hamilton, was professor of divinity and principal of the University of Edinburgh; his cousin, Dr. Robert Hamilton, was professor of anatomy and botany in the University of Glasgow, and of his six brothers, one was Dr. John Hamilton, a prominent physician of Calvert County, Maryland.
After studying with Dr. John Knox, a surgeon of Edinburgh, and attending the colleges of pharmacy in that city.
Alexander Hamilton sailed for America, settling in Annapolis, Maryland, in the winter of 1738-1739. Here he commanded a respectable practice among the wealthier colonials and supervised the education of others in his profession. Among his students was Thomas Bond, a native of Maryland, who in 1752 founded the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia.
Hamilton is better remembered, however, as a social chronicler. Aside from his one medical pamphlet, A Defence of Dr. Thomson’s Discourse (1752), supporting the practice of inoculation, two of his journals survive to us; the first, his Itinerarium, and the second, his history of the famous Tuesday Club. The Itinerarium, dedicated to Onorio Razolini in 1744, is the log of a journey into the northern colonies made in the summer of that year. Leaving Annapolis May 30, he traveled on horseback to Philadelphia, thence to New York. After a few days in New York he sailed to Albany in a sloop, remaining about a week, and returning to New York on July 5th. He proceeded by horse to Boston. Following a short visit there and a tour of New England, he returned by way of New York and Philadelphia, reaching Annapolis late in September, after a journey of 1, 624 miles.
His report of his travels forms an interesting document of observation and opinion, disclosing intimately to the reader the manners of the colonies and of the recorder himself. He was primarily interested, not in the medical men he met, of whom he had a poor opinion, but in the quality of “conversation” in the cities he visited, most of which he considered inferior. Philadelphia he found very solemn since Whitefield had preached there. New York was more to his liking, with the bustle of people in the streets, and gaily dressed women well in evidence. In Albany he was exasperated by the preponderance of the Dutch, whose language he deplored, and whose “women in general, both old and young, are the hardest favored I ever beheld. ” Of all the northern cities, Boston pleased him the most, for although it was “not by half such a flagrant sin to cheat . .. as to ride about for pleasure on the Sabbath day, ” still there was “an abundance of men of learning and parts” and at balls he saw “as fine a ring of ladies, as good dancing, and heard musick as elegant” as he had ever witnessed anywhere. To the rest of New England he was not so complimentary, and as he crossed the bridge on his return, he reports himself as saying “Farewell Connecticut . .. I have had a surfeit of your ragged money, rough roads, and enthusiastick people. ”
In the spring of the next year, as the fellow of Jonas Green, Hamilton assisted in the founding of the Tuesday Club - “designed for humor, and . .. a sort of farcical Drama of mock Majesty” - of which he was the historiographer, setting down the annals of the club in a mock-serious style, with caricatures of the members from his own pen. His name in the Club was Loquacious Scribble, and he was known as “a most cheerful facetious companion” who “never failed to delight with the effusions of his wit, humor and drollery. ” So much was he the “life and soul” of the organization that it never met after his death. He died at Annapolis at the age of forty-four.
Alexander Hamilton is known for his travel journal, Gentleman's Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton, recording his journey in 1744 from Maryland to York, Maine. It is the best portrait of men and manners, of rural and urban life, of the wide range of society and scenery in colonial America.
(Alexander Hamilton was born in Edinburgh, Scotland; gradu...)
Although reared a Presbyterian, Hamilton served from 1749 to 1752 on the vestry of St. Anne’s Anglican Church.
In 1747 Hamilton married Margaret Dulany, the daughter of Daniel Dulany of Annapolis.
