Existing comment:
Hamilton was born on the Caribbean island of Nevis in 1755 or 1757, to a Scottish father and a French mother who was still legally married to a man who refused to grant her a divorce. Hamilton's father abandoned her and their two sons shortly after the family moved to the island of St. Croix when Hamilton was ten.
In 1768, Hamilton survived a tropical illness that claimed his mother. He and his brother, James, were taken in by a cousin who soon committed suicide. James was apprenticed to a carpenter, while the younger but more promising Alexander moved in with a merchant (who may have been his biological father) and began clerking in the St. Croix office of a New York trading company, Beekman and Cruger.
It was here that Hamilton began to understand the intricacies of international commerce while reading extensively and writing for the local newspaper. After his published account of a devastating hurricane captured the admiration of readers, a collection was taken up in 1772 to send him to America to further his studies. He would never return to the Caribbean. |