Archibald Hamilton Rowan - Later Life

Later Life

Hamilton Rowan returned to the ancestral home of Killyleagh Castle, County Down, receiving a hero’s welcome. He was a respected figure, spending time in both Killyleagh and Dublin. While he had agreed to be a model citizen under the conditions of his return to Ireland, he remained somewhat active in politics and (contrary to the biographical tradition) never lost his youthful radicalism. Following his last public appearance at a meeting in the Rotunda in Dublin "organized by the Friends of Civil and Religious Liberty" on January 20, 1829, he was lifted up by a mob and paraded through the streets. After the deaths of his wife in February 1834 and his eldest son, Gawen William Rowan Hamilton, in August, Hamilton Rowan died in his home on November 1, 1834, an old man. While several of his radical acquaintances, like Tone and Jackson, died as a result of their political activities, Archibald Hamilton Rowan was able to escape this fate and live to the full age of 84. He was buried in the vaults of St Mary's Church, Dublin.

Hamilton Rowan was unable to finish his memoirs, and after his death, his family handed his papers and the task off to his friend, Thomas Kennedy Lowrey, who was also unable to finish them. Lowrey in turn passed them off to William Hamilton Drummond who finished the job and published Hamilton Rowan’s Autobiography in 1840. According to Harold Nicholson (his great-great-grandson), none of Hamilton Rowan's working papers exist, and some of them were burned by either his great-aunt Fanny or his great-aunt Jane. However, Hamilton Rowan produced several versions of his memoirs (in varying degrees of completion) at his own lithographic press in Dublin. These can be found in libraries in Ireland (Royal Irish Academy, National Library) and in Wilmington, Delaware (The Historical Society of Delaware). And manuscript versions of the memoirs by various hands (again, in varying degrees of completion) are preserved in the Royal Irish Academy, The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, and The Delaware Historical Society.