Alexander Hamilton lived hardscrabble childhood on St. Croix in Caribbean
Before he achieved Revolutionary War glory, or became a founding father and an author of the Federalist Papers；before he established a sophisticated financial system, served as the nation's first Treasury secretary or engaged in the type of petty political feud that would lead to his death in a duel at 49；before the $10 bill immortalized his beaked profile；and over two and a half century before a Broadway musical about his life would weave itself into the American cultural spirit of the early 21st century, Alexander Hamilton was an orgphan struggling to survive on the Caribbean island of St. Croix. Though he left as a teenager - and never returned - Hamilton's tragic West Indian childhood informed his entire life, shaping his views on government, economics, slavery and much more.
Today, visitors to St. Croix, the largest of the United States Virgin Islands, are mostly in search of a tropical vacation. Residents speak of Hamilton's West Indian roots with passing affection, as a tidbit of trivia. Visible evidence of his history with the island is minimal；the airport, which once honored him, was renamed in 1996 for the Tuskeegee airman Henry E. Rohlsen, a native son. But beyond the windswept beaches and luxurious resorts lurk the vestiges of a dark, sugar-fueled 18th-century heyday. As I discovered during a visit last summer, retracting Hamilton's footsteps on the island illuminates both the complex and tarnished history of St. Croix and the ghosts that haunted a deeply ambitious, flawed and brilliant man.
Alexander Hamilton was born on Nevis, an island in the British West Indies about 140 miles southeast of St. Croix, in either 1755 or 1757. (Lost documents and his own subterfuge have obscured the true date, but historians generally agreed on 1755.) While he was not quite “the bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar” - as John Adams once acidly described him - the circumstances surrounding his out-of-wedlock birth were certainly infelicitous. His father, James Hamilton, the dissolute fourth son of a Scottish laird, had washed up on the island of St. Kitts. He met the beautiful and spirited Rachel Fraucette Lavien, and the two embarked on an ill-fated romance.
By the time she met James in her mid-20s, Rachel had experienced her share of scandal. After her French Huguenot father died in 1745, leaving her a modest inheritance, she and her British mother moved to St. Croix, then the capital of the Danish West Indies, where her married sister lived on a successful plantation called the Grange. “A handsome young woman having a snug fortune,” as Hamilton described her, Rachel soon attracted the attentions of a debauched fortune-hunting Dane named Johann Michael Lavien, at least a dozen year her senior.
With her mother “captivated by the glitter” of Lavien, the 16-year-old Rachel quickly found herself pressed into “a hated marriage” that would cast the rest of her life in misery. The union, unhappy from the start, bore a son before she left the home around 1750. A furious Lavien accused her of adultery and invoked Danish law to have her thrown into a cell at Fort Christiansvaen, the thick-wall stronghold that served as both military post and prison for the town of Christiansted.
Completed in 1749, Fort Christiansvaern is a national historic site today, an impenetrable yellow structure overlooking the glittering turquoise waters of Gallows Bay. I repressed a shiver as I wandered alone through its labyrinth of whitewashed rooms. Though primarily used as military barracks and storage, the fort also served as the colony's prison for runaway slaves and criminals. In the west wing, I paused inside a cell to examine a small exhibition devoted to Hamilton and his family. Here in this cramped space, Rachel Lavien spent several squalid months, with only a narrow window offering paltry light and air.
I shook off the claustrophobia with a stroll through the sleepy, sunbaked center of historic Christiansted, on the north shore of the island. With its cobblestone streets and 18th-century Danish-style architecture, the town seemed almost forgotten by time - especially when contrasted with the strip malls and beach resorts scattered across the rest of St. Croix's tropical landscape.
Before he achieved Revolutionary War glory, or became a founding father and an author of the Federalist Papers；before he established a sophisticated financial system, served as the nation's first Treasury secretary or engaged in the type of petty political feud that would lead to his death in a duel at 49；before the $10 bill immortalized his beaked profile；and over two and a half century before a Broadway musical about his life would weave itself into the American cultural spirit of the early 21st century, Alexander Hamilton was an orgphan struggling to survive on the Caribbean island of St. Croix. Though he left as a teenager - and never returned - Hamilton's tragic West Indian childhood informed his entire life, shaping his views on government, economics, slavery and much more.
Today, visitors to St. Croix, the largest of the United States Virgin Islands, are mostly in search of a tropical vacation. Residents speak of Hamilton's West Indian roots with passing affection, as a tidbit of trivia. Visible evidence of his history with the island is minimal；the airport, which once honored him, was renamed in 1996 for the Tuskeegee airman Henry E. Rohlsen, a native son. But beyond the windswept beaches and luxurious resorts lurk the vestiges of a dark, sugar-fueled 18th-century heyday. As I discovered during a visit last summer, retracting Hamilton's footsteps on the island illuminates both the complex and tarnished history of St. Croix and the ghosts that haunted a deeply ambitious, flawed and brilliant man.
Alexander Hamilton was born on Nevis, an island in the British West Indies about 140 miles southeast of St. Croix, in either 1755 or 1757. (Lost documents and his own subterfuge have obscured the true date, but historians generally agreed on 1755.) While he was not quite “the bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar” - as John Adams once acidly described him - the circumstances surrounding his out-of-wedlock birth were certainly infelicitous. His father, James Hamilton, the dissolute fourth son of a Scottish laird, had washed up on the island of St. Kitts. He met the beautiful and spirited Rachel Fraucette Lavien, and the two embarked on an ill-fated romance.
By the time she met James in her mid-20s, Rachel had experienced her share of scandal. After her French Huguenot father died in 1745, leaving her a modest inheritance, she and her British mother moved to St. Croix, then the capital of the Danish West Indies, where her married sister lived on a successful plantation called the Grange. “A handsome young woman having a snug fortune,” as Hamilton described her, Rachel soon attracted the attentions of a debauched fortune-hunting Dane named Johann Michael Lavien, at least a dozen year her senior.
With her mother “captivated by the glitter” of Lavien, the 16-year-old Rachel quickly found herself pressed into “a hated marriage” that would cast the rest of her life in misery. The union, unhappy from the start, bore a son before she left the home around 1750. A furious Lavien accused her of adultery and invoked Danish law to have her thrown into a cell at Fort Christiansvaen, the thick-wall stronghold that served as both military post and prison for the town of Christiansted.
Completed in 1749, Fort Christiansvaern is a national historic site today, an impenetrable yellow structure overlooking the glittering turquoise waters of Gallows Bay. I repressed a shiver as I wandered alone through its labyrinth of whitewashed rooms. Though primarily used as military barracks and storage, the fort also served as the colony's prison for runaway slaves and criminals. In the west wing, I paused inside a cell to examine a small exhibition devoted to Hamilton and his family. Here in this cramped space, Rachel Lavien spent several squalid months, with only a narrow window offering paltry light and air.
I shook off the claustrophobia with a stroll through the sleepy, sunbaked center of historic Christiansted, on the north shore of the island. With its cobblestone streets and 18th-century Danish-style architecture, the town seemed almost forgotten by time - especially when contrasted with the strip malls and beach resorts scattered across the rest of St. Croix's tropical landscape.
