Alexander Hamilton Papers

In spring 1848, Congress appropriated $20,000 to buy the papers of Alexander Hamilton from his family, including his widow, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton. Mrs. Hamilton, 91 years old and widowed since 1804, had moved to Washington that year to live with her daughter and, in the words of a friend, to press her “honorable claims” on the federal government. For years, she had been gathering and preserving her husband’s papers so that his memory would continue to shine even after she was no longer alive to burnish it. Now her work was done.

Congress kept Alexander Hamilton’s papers at the State Department, where the first to use them was John Church Hamilton, the Hamiltons’ son, who fulfilled his mother’s long-held wish when he published his seven-volume Works of Alexander Hamilton between 1850 and 1851. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt directed State to turn over its historical papers, including the Hamilton papers, to the Library of Congress. They arrived in the Library’s Manuscript Division in 1904, and they have been here ever since. ... [mehr] http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2017/08/new-online-alexander-hamilton-papers/