PAGE 79. The lower story of this fine building, built by Mr. Mitchell, is in a state of entire preservation, and is now one of the largest stores in Christiansted.
PAGE 87. The private burying-ground of the Lyttons was on the Grange estate, owned, at the time of Rachael's death, by Chamberlain Robert Tuite.
PAGE 88. Two candlesticks of this fashion have been preserved in
Frederiksted, and are said to have been used by Hamilton while there.
PAGE 91. I am convinced that Hugh Knox baptized Hamilton, and have had the old records of St. Croix, deposited in the archives of Copenhagen, thoroughly searched. But they are in so dilapidated a condition that one might as profitably appeal to the recording angel. In 1782 the French destroyed the church registers of Nevis, but it is hardly likely that Rachael Levine had Hamilton baptized. The islanders were indifferent to baptism under the most amiable conditions, usually waiting until it was reasonable to suppose that their brood was complete, when they took it to the font en bloc. But Hugh Knox would have attached great importance to this ceremony.
PAGE 120. There is no doubt in my mind that Hamilton and young Stevens were either first or second cousins, and that the resemblance between them which subsequently, in the United States, gave rise to the gossip that they were brothers, was due to this fact. I was not able to discover that Mrs. Stevens was a daughter of John and Mary Fawcett, but she or her husband might well have been closely related to Hamilton's grandparents, for the few prominent families of Nevis and St. Christopher intermarried again and again. The Fawcetts were married at least twenty-two years before Rachael was born, and doubtless had one of the large families of that time.
PAGE 131. "The Fields" was the old name for the City Hall Park.
PAGE 133. I have inferred that the speech Hamilton made on this occasion was a spontaneous outburst of the same thought which he elaborated a few weeks later in his history-making pamphlets. Wherever it has been possible, I have used his own words, for he must have talked much as he wrote.
PAGE 136. "Indeed he was the first to perceive and develop the idea of a real union of the people of the United States"—"History of the Constitution of the United States" by George Ticknor Curtis, who also comments at length upon his having been the chief force in bringing the discontent of the colonists to a head and precipitating the Revolution.
PAGE 145. There is space only for Hamilton's share in these battles. I am obliged to assume that the reader knows his Revolutionary history.
PAGE 165. Nothing can be told here of Laurens's private history beyond the statements that his too sensitive mind held him responsible for the accidental death of a younger brother, and that he had married a woman in England, whom he had left at the altar, to join, with all possible haste, the fighting forces in America, and whom he never saw again. If this meets the eye of his family and they care to trust me with the necessary papers, I shall be glad to write a life of Laurens.