Early Life and Career
Hamilton Fish was born on August 3, 1808 at what is now known as the Stuyvesant–Fish House in Greenwich Village, New York City, to Nicholas Fish and Elizabeth Stuyvesant (a great-great-granddaughter of New Amsterdam's Peter Stuyvesant), and his parents named him after their friend Alexander Hamilton. Nicholas Fish (1758–1833) was a leading Federalist politician and notable figure of the American Revolutionary War. Col. Fish was active in the Yorktown Campaign that resulted in the surrender of Lord Cornwallis. Peter Stuyvesant was a prominent founder of New York, then a Dutch Colony, and his family owned much property in Manhattan.
Fish graduated from Columbia College of Columbia University in 1827 and was admitted to the New York bar in 1830, practicing briefly with William Beach Lawrence. At Columbia Fish became fluent in French, a language that would later help him as U.S. Secretary of State. He served as commissioner of deeds for the city and county of New York from 1832 through 1833, and was an unsuccessful Whig candidate for New York State Assembly in 1834.
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