Complete Works. Hamilton Alexander
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connection with his teaching, and applied to Columbia College for funds,1 but without success. He then bought four plots of the so-called "common land" on the middle road (now Fifth Avenue), between 47th and 51st Streets, extending to a point a hundred feet west of Sixth Avenue. This was in 1801, and in 1804 he paid for the property.
Upon this space he laid out a diversified garden, afterward erecting glass-houses and raising a great variety of tropical and sub-tropical plants. It was his idea as well to raise vegetables for the supply of his fellow townsmen. Hamilton, who was fond of horticulture, shared Hosack's enthusiasm, and as he daily drove from his own place several miles north, was in the habit of stopping to compare notes with his enthusiastic family doctor, who donated cuttings and bulbs.
Available correspondence conveys an idea of the great pleasure the cultivation of his place gave him.
He wrote to his old comrade-in-arms, General Pinckney of South Carolina, from the Grange:1
Alexander Hamilton to Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
December 20, 1802.
"MY DEAR SIR: A garden, you know, is a very usual refuge of a disappointed politician. Accordingly I have purchased a few acres about nine miles from town, have built a house, and am cultivating a garden. The melons in your country are very fine. Will you have the goodness to send me some seed, both of the water and musk melons? My daughter2 adds another request, which is for three or four of your paroquets. She is very fond of birds. If there be anything in this quarter, the sending of which can give you pleasure, you have only to name them. As farmers, a new source of sympathy has arisen between us, and I am pleased with everything in which our likings and tastes can be approximated. Amidst the triumphant reign of democracy, do you retain sufficient interest in public affairs to feel any curiosity about what is going on? In my opinion, the follies and vices of the administration have as yet made no material impression as to their disadvantages. . . .
Adieu, my dear Sir
Ever Yours,
Alexander Hamilton
A few months later Pinckney replied:
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney to Alexander Hamilton
CHARLESTON, March 6th, 1803.
MY DEAR SIR: I wrote you a few lines yesterday and sent you some watermelon seeds and musk-melon seeds by the brig Charleston Packet which sails this morning. I formerly sent some to Mrs. Washington, at Mount Vernon, but she told me they did not answer so well as some she got in the neighborhood; perhaps had she planted the seeds from the melons which were produced from the Carolina seed the subsequent year, they would have adapted themselves to the climate and produced good fruit. It was by this means we obtained our fine cotton, which has been of such advantage to our State. The first year it produced but three or four pods; by planting the seed of these pods the second year, they produced thirty; and by following the same method, the third year they were thoroughly naturalized, and bore from one hundred and fifty to two hundred pods.
I will also send you by the Industry a few seeds of the salvia cocinea, or scarlet sage, which I believe you have not with you, and of the erytherina herbacea, or coral shrub; also a few seeds of the Indian creeper, and some of a beautiful purple convolvulus.
I will endeavor to obtain some paroquets for Miss Hamilton. I have not seen any for some years; ours are the large kind, by no means equal in beauty to the small African species. . . .
Hamilton left, after his death, certain memoranda regarding the arrangement of his garden, which show that he was more than an amateur. Whether he had availed himself of Batty Langley's "New Principles of Gardening,"1 which was Washington's horticulture guide and a well-known authority in those days, is not known; yet he seems to have had a practical knowledge of what was needed, and a few of the notes left by him may be appended to show what is meant.
1. Transplant fruit trees from the other side of the stable.
2. Fences repaired. (Worn away) repaired behind stable. The cross fence at the foot of the hill? Potatoes Bradhursts? Ground may be removed and used for this purpose. Cows no longer to be permitted to range.
3. The sod and earth which were removed in making the walks where it is good may be thrown upon the grounds in front of the House, and a few waggon loads of the compost.
4. A Ditch to be dug along the fruit garden and grove about four feet wide, and the earth taken and thrown upon the sand hill in the rear.
After referring to the arrangement of flower beds and the laying out of a vegetable garden he proceeded:
2. The Gardener, after marking these out and making a beginning by way of example, will apply himself to the planting of Raspberries in the orchard. He will go to Mr. Delafield for a supply of the English sort and if not sufficient will add from our own and some to be got from our neighbors.
3. If it can be done in time I should be glad if space could be prepared in the center of the flower garden for planting a few tulips, lilies, hyacinths, and [missing]. The space should be a circle of which the diameter is Eighteen feet: and there should be nine of each sort of flowers; but the gardener will do well to consult as to the season.
They may be at arranged thus: Wild roses around the outside of the flower garden with laurel at foot.
If practicable in time I should be glad some laurel should be planted along the edge of the shrubbery and round the clump of trees near the house; also sweet briars and [illegible]
A few dogwood trees not large, scattered along the margin of the grove would be very pleasant, but the fruit trees there must be first removed and advanced in front.
These labours, however, must not interfere with the hot bed.
Life at the Grange was undoubtedly a merry one, for within its hospitable walls were gathered many of those clever people with whom Hamilton had so much to do during his many years of busy, official life. Gouverneur Morris often came from Morrisania, while Rufus King drove over from Jamaica in Long Island to discuss politics or gossip
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with the former Secretary. The Schuylers, too, came frequently, and sent good things from the Albany homestead, and in many of the General's letters are references to prodigious gifts of vegetables and fruit, which were consigned to his daughter by way of the river sloops, while in the winter it was rare for a beef to be slaughtered without a quarter finding its way to the Grange.
The Hamilton family was often invited to Albany, and alluring accounts of what awaited them were drawn by the devoted father-in-law. General Schuyler wrote from Wood Creek, where he was journeying July 15, 1802: "We have excellent mutton here, and as fine and fat salmon as ever were dished and I believe as cheap as Cod at the New York market. I gave half a dollar for a very fine one weighing a little more than nineteen pounds. They are taken four miles from here."
In Hamilton's periods of relaxation he was to be seen wandering through the woods of Harlem with a single-barrelled fowling-piece, on the lookout for woodcock or other game, or he found his way to the wooded shores of his estate in search of an occasional striped bass in the clear water of the North River. Before his death he gave this gun to Trumbull, the artist, and it ultimately came into the writer's possession. On the stock are roughly carved the letters "A. Hamilton, N. Y.," and this was evidently his own work. When occasions were favorable, the worries of professional work, and possibly the importunities of builders, were escaped by a visit to the theatre, Hamilton and his wife going to the city, where they were the guests of many of their old friends, and they still kept a house in Partition Street. About this time the New or Park Theatre was under the management of Hallam, or Hodgkinson, or Cooper. According to the contemporary press it appeared that the most generous and varied kinds of entertainment were there offered. Among the plays produced we find the "Tragedy of Alexander the Great with a Grand Heroic Spectacle of the Siege of Oxydrace," "The Positive Man," the "Duenna", "The Lyar," "The Manager in Distress," "Count