Remains of slaves owned by Hamilton's father-in-law reburied in New York state

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Remains of slaves owned by Hamilton's father-in-law reburied in New York state

DNA analysis of remains recovered in 2005 confirms identities of slaves
owned by Revolutionary War general and senator Philip Schuyler

Alan Yuhas
Saturday 18 June 2016 16.48 BST

The 14 bodies were found during work on water pipes, each of them aligned to the east. They were the remains of a man, six women, five children and two infants, and they were near land once owned by the father-in-law of Alexander Hamilton, a hero of the US revolutionary war. They were the family’s slaves.

On Saturday the community that survived them in Albany, New York, will see them buried again in a cemetery first dedicated in the run-up to the civil war for Irish Catholics, the unwanted immigrants of the 1860s.

The remains were recovered in 2005, but it was not until years later that DNA and bone analysis showed African ancestry and the telltale marks of slavery.

“They could tell that they were small in stature but muscular,” said Kelly Grimaldi, historian for St Agnes, the church near which the bones where found and where they will be buried.

“They didn’t appear to have been abused, no gunshot wounds, no knifed bones, a few broken bones. But overall the conclusion was that they definitely had a hard life.”

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/18/philip-schuyler-family-slaves-buried-again-new-york

[Person 2713]

1. Hamilton never personally owned slaves

Alexander Hamilton worked for a trading company that sold -slaves but later he wrote of desires to improve conditions of minorities in the United States, especially for black slaves

During war he tried to persuade the south to offer slaves freedom for fighting

As part of his lobbying, Hamilton wrote to the President of the Continental Congress, John Jay, arguing that black's "natural faculties are probably as good as ours" and that "the contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks, makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience."

Hamilton concluded his letter saying that he hoped that the plan to "give them their freedom with their muskets" would lead to general emancipation, "for the dictates of humanity and true policy equally interest me in favour of this unfortunate class of men."

He was born in the Caribbean during the slave trades

[Squinch]

2. And there were rumors that he had African ancestry himself. One line of his lineage was always

kept a bit fuzzy.