[For this post, I'm heavily indebted to Newton's Alexander Hamilton: The Formative Years. Newton writes for over 12 pages and offers 109 glorious footnotes discussing the controversy over AH's birth year. I’m detailing this because it’s important to appreciate how many St. Croix ties AH had when I get into his friendships, that never-ending post.]
Until 1939, nearly everyone thought AH's birth date was January 11, 1757. 1757 is the birth year that AH used consistently throughout his life; it's the birth year his family and friends attested to. The few writers who objected to this year did so on the grounds that he was so small and delicate he likely appeared younger than he actually was, or that he could not have been employed so young.
In 1939, H.U. Ramsing published an essay on Hamilton's birth with extracts from the probate record for the estate of AH's mother. This document, completed in February 1768 by a clerk and signed by James Lytton, Sr, uncle of AH, in place of Peter Lytton, AH's cousin, states that she had "two sons, namely James Hamilton and Alexander Hamilton, one 15 and the other one 13 years old.*
This causes a flurry of re-evaluation of AH's birth year. Now I will note that 1939 is in a period of decline in AH's popularity. He gets hammered for his seeming love of banking, capitalism, aristocracy, protection of the rich, etc. That he seems to have spent his entire adult life lying about his age is just gravy.
Some historians accept the 1755 birth year, making the following Arguments:
The probate record must be correct;
AH's youthful poetry endeavors support a 1755 birth year;
AH was witnessing legal documents as early as 1766 for Beekman and Cruger, and there's no way a 9-year-old would have this responsibility or even have a job;
AH is a liar and schemer, so it makes sense that he would lie about his age for his entire adult life. Or (Chernow!) AH is so desperate to fit in he's even shaving two years off of his age, because he's such an insecure outcast in his own mind.
[Now there remains the possibility that AH may have thought he was born in 1757, when he was actually born in 1755. My grandmother did not know if she was born in 1908 or 1910. But she also knew that she didn't know - she wasn't declaring a birth year for herself the way AH did. As a contemporary of AH's, Newton offers up James McHenry as someone whose birth year is also unclear.]
Argument 1, the probate record must be the correct claim:
Records from the West Indies are highly unreliable. To quote Newton (pg 20): 'Dates and ages were recorded incorrectly, names were spelled and misspelled in every possible variation, and records were poorly kept, inaccurately transcribed, lost, damaged, or destroyed." One example of this is AH's mother. How many different ways are there to spell Rachel Fawcette Levine? Her burial registry is also incorrect on several details. [Newton produces several other examples of the inaccuracy of West Indian records.]
Refutation 1A: the clerk made an error, or the information was transcribed incorrectly.
James Lytton, Sr. was signing this document in place of his son, Peter Lytton. "Present for the two minor children and heirs was Mr. James Lytton on behalf of Peter Lytton." It's not clear why Peter was not present, only that he was designated as the person to complete the document and did not do so. Therefore, it's possible that his father, James, having to rush to finalize this document in Peter's place, simply did not know or mis-stated the ages of his nephews to the clerk. It also seems possible from the record that neither James nor Alexander were present to correct any misinformation. Flexner states that James Lytton may have deliberately lied about the ages of his nephews in order to increase their likelihood of employment, and then AH returned to his real age (the 1757 birth date) when he arrived in America. Though I don't really care what Flexner thinks because that speculation would be impossible to substantiate, Flexner's wrong about employment ages anyway, and Flexner makes stuff up all the time in The Young Hamilton.
Refutation 1B: James Lytton, Sr. made an error
In both A&B, the probate record is simply wrong.
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Argument 2, AH's poetry points to a 1755 birthdate:
In April 1771, "A.H." submitted poetry for publication in The Royal Danish American Gazette, stating "I am a youth about seventeen." Hamilton's authorship of these poems can't be demonstrated. Even so, with a 1755 birth date, he would have recently turned 16, not 17. Of course, it's also possible Hamilton is the author, and lied about his age at the time of sending in the poems anonymously for publication to make himself appear older. [There's also lots of stuff in some biographies about AH's sexual precocity and what age it's more likely he would have written such poems, but those poems don't guarantee that "A.H." is sexually active - actually, they read as the opposite - a fantasy.]
In October 1772, The Royal Danish American Gazette published "The Soul Ascending into Bliss." Elizabeth Hamilton was very proud of this poem, sent stanzas of it to a friend, and stated that AH wrote it when he was 18. J.C. Hamilton wrote that AH wrote it when he was at King's College. It's likely that EH was JCH's source, so all that establishes is that EH believed her husband to have been born in 1757 and to have written this poem when he was at King's.
Refutation 2: The identity of "A.H." is unclear; EH likely mis-attributed the date of AH's poem.
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Argument 3, AH was witnessing legal documents in 1766, so he was more likely 11, and anyway would have just been too young for employment if he were born in 1757:
There's zero evidence that 9 vs 11 was considered a substantial difference in maturity in young boys in the West Indies, so that an 11-year-old can serve as a witness, but a 9-year-old can't. A two-year difference in age is not that drastic.
Additionally, boys were often working by the time they were 7 in the colonies. Newton also provides the examples of Henry Knox, who started working at a bookstore at the age of 9; and Benjamin Franklin, who worked for his father at the age of 10 and by 16 was managing a paper. Also, as AH himself notes, he was still a 'lowly clerk’ in 1769, at the age of 12. He wouldn't become the de facto business manager of the firm for another couple of years, and he is without question a prodigy. The fact that it's unclear what happened to James Hamilton, Jr after his mother's death also points to both boys having to seek employment at early ages, likely at the time that James Hamilton, Sr. left.
Refutation to 3: There’s no evidence that the witnessing of a document by an 11-year-old carried more weight than that of a 9-year-old. Boys frequently worked at young ages in the colonies. It does not seem a two-year difference in age would account for such a drastic difference in responsibilities, including the ability to witness to legal documents.
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Argument 4, AH lied about his age:
I could get into the number of contemporaries, even his enemies, who attest to AH's honesty and frankness throughout his life as Newton does, but I won't here. Instead, let's assume for a moment that AH did lie about his age.
Question 1: Why would AH want to make himself appear younger? According to some, because he wanted to more closely match the ages of his classmates at King's College. Students at King's College were between 12 and 19, with the average age of entrance as 15. If born in 1755, AH would have been 18 upon beginning his studies. Newton points out that one of AH's classmates, David Clarkson (enrolled in 1774), was born in 1751, so AH would not have even been the oldest person there.
Question 2: So if AH wanted to lie about his age to appear younger at King’s, when exactly did he start lying about his age? On that, historians who push the 1755 birth date can't agree, strangely. It seems obvious that because of the intertwining of people in AH's life, he really would have had to decide that he was shaving two years off of his age from the very time he enrolls at Elizabethtown Academy (the people he knows there carry through to King's), if not at the moment he arrives in America.
But wait, plenty of people who knew AH or knew of him in St Croix, also lived in NYC or traveled through there often!** His employers are based in NYC! Let's run down the people who would have had to go along with this lie:
Edward Stevens - AH's childhood St. Croix friend, who studied at King's College from 1770 to 1774. Their time at King's likely briefly overlapped, and they shared some of the same friends.
James Yard - brother-in-law of Edward Stevens and knowledgeable enough about AH and life in St. Croix to provide details of AH's background to Timothy Pickering (for Pickering's attempted biography of AH where he entertains the notion of Thomas Stevens as AH's real father).
Hugh Knox - possibly knew AH as early as fall 1771, definitely knew him spring 1772, travels to NYC intermittently also.
Ann Lytton Mitchell - AH's cousin who traveled back and forth between St. Croix and NYC and discussed AH's parentage with EH.
Nicholas Cruger and family- AH's St. Croix employer - originally from NYC and based there; Cruger's son marries the eldest John & Angelica Church daughter.
Cornelius Kortright and family - AH's St Croix employer - originally from NYC and based there; Kortright & Co handle AH's financial account when he first moves to NYC. Cornelius is the brother of Lawrence Kortright, Elizabeth Monroe's father - I think AH lying about his age would have been a fun detail to share with James Monroe, if true.
David Beekman and family - AH's St. Croix employer - originally from NYC.
Ship captains and merchants who traveled between NY and St Croix - not going to list them, except for George Codwise, NYC ship captain for Cruger who dealt with AH on St. Croix and years later hires AH as his attorney; he names his son Alexander Hamilton Codwise.
Note: AH would be employed as a lawyer for no fewer than 15 cases involving a Cruger, Kortright, or Beekman, and worked on cases dealing with merchants based in St. Croix. AH didn't cut ties to St. Croix as some may think.
AH lied about his age for 30+ years, and not one of the people above ever said anything? Maybe they didn't know that he was born in 1755? It seems highly unlikely that Stevens, Yard, Mitchell, Knox, Cruger, and Kortright would not have known AH's actual age in St. Croix.
And it's not like NO ONE knew that AH claimed to be born in 1757 until funeral orations were being delivered and his tombstone went up. For example:
Nicholas Fish wrote to EH that AH was "about eighteen" when he wrote his political pieces, and he's "certain" of this because they "compared and knew each other's ages, he being one year older than me.”
Benjamin Rush notes AH as "a young man of 21 years of age" in Oct 1777.
The Pennsylvania Gazette reports in 1781 that AH was 23 years of age in the previous year.
In AH's letter to his uncle William Hamilton (1797), he states that he was "about sixteen" (three months shy of 16) when he arrived in America (Oct 1772) and "by the age of nineteen" could earn a college degree and became an artillery captain (1776). Both point to him believing he was born in 1757.
James Kent wrote to EH in 1832 that AH died when he had not yet reached his 48th year.
So we have to believe that AH confidently went around telling people that he was an age consistent with having been born in 1757, and never gets called out on it even though there are several people around who could have done so and caught him in this lie.
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So let’s look at these options again:
The probate record is incorrect (either the clerk or Lytton made an error, or the probate record was later mis-transcribed);
The poetry authorship or dating is mis-attributed;
Historians don't know exactly how old one had to be in St. Croix in the 1760s to act as a witness on a property record;
AH and a number of co-conspirators lied about his age for to prevent him from being an older student at King’s College, and got away with it for over 150+ years, with no hint of this ever making its way into any record or correspondence, until the discovery of a 1768 probate record that has to be accurate.
As Brookhiser states, "[B]elieving that a man is more likely to know his own birthday than a clerk in a probate court, I will accept 1757." pg 16, Alexander Hamilton, American
*The date of James Hamilton, Jr.'s birth, whether he is older or younger than AH, whether he's really AH's brother, or whether he even existed at all(??!!) is also up for debate in Hamilton biographies.
**This is a huge thing to me that I'll get into in a few days, but gosh, AH was FAR from "an immigrant coming from the bottom" - he was wrapped in privilege with elite NYC/NJ people who knew him/of him from the very beginning of his American adventure.
