William Stephen Hamilton
(1797-1850)
BIRTH
August 4, 1797
PLACE
Albany, New York
DEATH
October 9, 1850
PLACE
Sacramento, California
FAMILY
SISTER
Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler
(1734-1803)
BROTHER
Philip Hamilton
(1782-1801)
SISTER
Angelica Hamilton
(1784-1857)
CHILDREN
Eliza Hamilton
(1757-1854)
HOMES
NICKNAMES
Billy
RELIGIOUS VIEWS
RELIGION NOT DOCUMENTED
DENOMINATION NOT DOCUMENTED
MEMBERSHIPS
AWARDS
William Stephen Hamilton (1797–1850), son of Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler, became a surveyor, legislator and lead miner in the Midwest. He left West Point in 1817, settled in Illinois and later founded Hamilton’s Diggings in Wisconsin. He served in territorial politics and militia campaigns, including the Black Hawk War. He joined California’s gold rush in 1849 with little success. He died in Sacramento the next year, probably of cholera; the cause is uncertain.
EARLY LIFE
The exact date and place of William S. Hamilton’s birth have not been established in the source used for this entry. The surviving biographical summary provides only limited evidence about childhood, schooling, and the daily circumstances of the household, so those details are not reconstructed here without documentation. What can be stated securely is that this person belonged to the interconnected family world from which HistoryGPS traces participants, relatives, and later descendants of the Revolutionary generation.
No distinct public profession or office for William S. Hamilton is established by the source summary used for this entry. The surviving record is primarily genealogical and documents family identity rather than an independent public career. Additional claims about employment, public service, or accomplishments have been omitted where the consulted source did not support them.
CAREER
DEATH
William Stephen Hamilton, son of Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler, became a surveyor, legislator and lead miner in the Midwest. He served in 1842 and 1843 as an elected member of the Wisconsin Territorial House of Representatives, from Iowa County. Hamilton lost an 1843 election for the national-level office of Wisconsin Territory delegate to the United States Congress, and in 1847 he lost an election for delegate to the Wisconsin Constitutional Convention to John O'Connor. Hamilton set out for California, arriving in 1849, with high hopes, and new equipment. William S. Hamilton died in Sacramento, California, on October 9, 1850, at age 53. The available biographical account does not describe a continuous final medical course. It gives no dependable sequence of treatment and last symptoms from which to reconstruct a more detailed bedside narrative.
POPULAR BIOGRAPHIES
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