James Alexander Hamilton - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Hamilton was born in New York City, New York, on April 14, 1788, the third son of American founding father Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton.

Hamilton later wrote of his childhood:

Hamilton's gentle nature rendered his house a joyous one to his children...His intercourse with his children was always affectionate and confiding, which excited in them a corresponding confidence and devotion. I distinctly recollect the scene at breakfast in the front room of the house in Broadway. My dear mother, seated as was her wont at the head of the table with a napkin in her lap, cutting slices of bread and spreading them with butter for the younger boys...When the lessons were finished the father and the elder children were called to breakfast, after which the boys were packed off to school.

When he was sixteen, his father was killed in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr. Along with his mother and siblings, Hamilton was present in the room, sitting at his father's bedside, when he died just hours after the duel.

Hamilton graduated from Columbia University in 1805 at the age of seventeen. He later studied law, and in 1809, he was admitted to the bar, and practiced law for a year in Waterford, New York.