In the eye of a hurricane there is quiet for just a moment, a yellow sky. I was twelve when my mother died.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Rachel Lovien, Hamilton’s mother, was first married to a man named Lavien. By this man, she had a son named Peter. Later, she met James Hamilton at Saint Kitt in the early 1750s, both Rachel and James were not doing well socially because she had been in jail because of crimes committed against her husband (supposed adultery and abandonment), and he because he was not doing too well financially - he was one of nine sons of his father and would not inherit the lairdom or any wealth. Because she was technically not allowed to remarry, the couple moved to Nevis. The reason they could not legally marry was because Lavien sued her for divorce on the grounds that she had committed adultery and abandonment - if she had sued for divorce she could have remarried.
There, James was born to the couple and then later, Alexander, who was named for his grandfather. Eventually, their father left when Alexander was ten, supposedly to collect debts. Rachel consequently took the boys to Saint Croix to escape the stigma. It was February 19, 1768 when Rachel died from a tropical fever, Alexander had it too but recovered, just as is in this song.
Sources: the following sources were used - the collected letters/writings of Alexander Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton the Revolution, Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton, The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton by Allan McLane Hamilton, Hamilton by Richard Syllia, and Charles Cerami’s book called Young Patriots. In addition, War of Two by John Sedgwick and Washington and Hamilton by Tony Williams were used throughout. Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton by Tilar J. Mazzeo was used too.
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