The Antics of Anthony

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Here comes Anthony again--because like a new baby in days of yore--this kitty takes up much of our time and attention here at the Waldron domicile. I think the first thing out of my mouth every morning is either "No! Stop That!" or "Get out there!" or just plain "OUCH," when he ducks under the covers and bites my toes, which in his hallucinatory kitten's world, must appear as tasty little sausages. Tony's not "bad," not any more than a toddler or a puppy, just filled with what the 18th Century called "Animal Spirits" or maybe what the stock market types call "irrational exuberance."

How calm and sweet he looks!

Whatever you call it, our Anthony's got it in spades--boundless energy, curiosity and Cat-itude. We've had a lot of cats over the last 50+ years, but this one, I have to say, is unique. Of course, you can counter that with Colette's "There are no ordinary cats," but this boy definitely has star quality.
Too bad I've got no one here to video his Surya-Bonaly-type back flips, his in-air-twists and seven foot leaps onto shelves no kitty should be able to reach, or we'd have a new internet sensation.
(If you don't remember this incredible athlete, check her out here.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UdVcEZZ6so




We get a daily work-out because he keeps Kitty Mom & Dad on their toes--and/or leaping out of their seats to grab what has just been bowled out of the way when Rocket Cat dashes across a window ledge or a table or the kitchen counter. Glasses of coke, water, house plants, framed pictures, Mom's stacks of paper or books--go over in the twinkling of an eye--dash, splash, crash--when "Ant-Knee" from Long Island is on a rip.

Tony says, "I sits where I wants, when I wants."

One morning, when particularly wound up, he ran upstairs after me, rushed into the bathroom and leapt straight onto the window sill which held a pair of forty year old cactuses. I think he was back out the door again in a single rebounding leap, even before the pots hit the floor, dumping the old fellows and their gravelly soil all over the floor in a giant prickly mess. Sometimes, when those "animal spirits" are high, he'll fling himself from the floor onto the walls and scrabble along as if he's a motorcyclist doing a circus "wall of death" stunt.


He wants to taste everything we are eating, and, as you can see, from his place on the counter where we are assembling our lunch, this is pretty easy. He loves cheese and has even assayed my curried kidney beans on brown rice with broccoli. (In end, it wasn't a favorite.) Tony much prefers swiping meat off the counter when Chris is attempting to get it into the sauté pan. Smacking cats doesn't work particularly well, although with him it seems to have a temporary effect in getting him to go away, it doesn't take him long to forgive us and return to whatever naughty thing he was doing.
The only cure is imprisonment in an upstairs "suite" where he has a bed, a box and plenty of munchies and water.

All bowls, pots, and pans are subject to footy inspection

A few days back, he launched himself from the top of the fridge onto the counter, scattering plates and dishes filled with food. This did not please his hoo-mans at all, and I carried him upstairs to the "slammer" while he gnawed on my arm and (alternately) my pigtail to let me know how cross with me he was. After all, his magnificent six foot leap should have garnered applause; moreover, he hadn't even begun his tasting tour of our lunch!

Willy-Yum and Tony (sort of) share a spot on the cat rack;

Still, Tony can purr, kiss, and cuddle with the best of 'em. We've never had so much creative mischief and charm bundled up into a single hyper active fur friend. Tony's a feline trip we're glad we've taken.
😺😺😺✌✌✌

~~Juliet Waldron
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Why write historical fiction? This is a question that, for me, goes back a way. The 1980’s, when I first started writing, was a low point for the genre. I remember querying ever so many agents and getting replies which said “only a small market for historical fiction.” That was discouraging enough, but not so much that I stopped working on those novels, driven by the writing demons as I was.   

Like everyone else who will reply to this question, I started young reading historical fiction, following the books my mother took out of the library. She was a voracious reader of both history and science fiction, and I became one as well. I began early, and remember writing a short story about the Princes in the Tower back in 8^th grade that got an “A.” (My story successfully creeped-out  the class, too, which was even better.)

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I could say that my love of history happened because I’ve often lived in old houses—several with disturbances of the kind that are often labelled “ghost.” I could talk about the love of my important elders for history, their familiarity with the past, and the way the past was always present in discussions about politics, or about how trips were taken to view gravestones, battlefields, Indian mounds, and museums. 

I could dwell on the lit professor grandpa that I adored. His study fairly breathed old books, tweed, leather, pipe smoke and things past. A large oil painting of the Canterbury Pilgrims overlooked his desk, a beautiful obsidian spear point that had emerged during the spring plowing at the family farm in upstate NY sat beside his typewriter. All of these objects had stories, and he shared them with his children and grandchildren. At home, that wonderful quote of William Faulkner’s “The Past is never gone. It’s not even past,” was a reality. 

The truth is that I’ve never felt truly comfortable with the noisy, gasoline era into which I was born. Cars were something to get around in, but not by me, as a class of objects, beloved. Every time a tree falls in the creation of a road or a new development, I feel a terrible sense of loss.

I’ve often spoken of what I write as a kind of time travel, because for me that’s what it is—a way to be present in another place and time, to smell and taste that world, to deal with the hardships and the inevitable dirt and sweat, the blood and the loss, that is the genuine past.  The “romance” died quite early for me because I read and read and read, ever deeper into my chosen subjects. 

Living inside another time and place, and/or inside another culture, is truly an immersive experience; I love the scuba sense of diving in and swimming around inside the deep waters of history. Originally, I wrote from my own European-American perspective, and my books were set in 18th Century Europe or England or the colonial US.  The time shift alone caused me to change my perspective. I sometimes get nasty reviews because the 18th Century characters about whom I write do not behave up to the highest standards of the 21st Century. I always want to reply to these folks that I don't write these stories to make them comfortable. I write to show them as much as I can of what I've learned about what was--the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth--to the best of my ability.

Maybe I'd be richer if I sugar-coated, but taking the trip into the past and taking my readers along with me is always far more important than whatever is currently P.C. If you want to read about the 18th Century people, expect to meet  men who have "patriarchy" firmly entrenched in their heads and women who have no other recourse than to accept or attempt to circumvent whatever their menfolk, their churches and their society dish

out. Englishwomen, as every reader of Jane Austen ought to know, could not inherit property until quite recently.

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In Genesee, and, later, to a far greater extent, in Fly Away Snow Goose, I had another experience. To write Snow Goose, I had to shed the Euro-based colonizer culture into which I was born so that I could inhabit (as far as I was able) a life-way with a totally different outlook. The Tlicho tribe in Fly Away Snow Goose were historically a nomadic, communal people, living in small groups that, for survival reasons, became even smaller in winter--who shared food with one another. They disapproved the kind of willful ignorance of their environment, the braggadocio and "me-first-ism" that is  rampant in the capital-driven European cultures which almost overwhelmed them. 

Instead of "conquerors of nature," the Tlicho strove to always to be in "right relationship" with the earth and her creatures, to eat and/or to make use of every piece of any animal they killed. They saw the spirits in the sky and in the earth and water all across the enormous terrain they traversed every year, as they followed the caribou migration. The land under their feet was holy. Everyone had to pull together, or the group would not survive the extreme winters where starvation was a very real threat. 

Telling this story, and the experience of immersion in the words and stories of my "subjects", has changed my outlook on the day-to-day world around me in a fundamental way.  This time, the research worked a sea-change. After studying the Tlicho, I've got on an entirely new pair of spectacles.  

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~~Juliet Waldron
www.julietwaldron.com

What research can turn up: Hidden History!

PURCHASE FROM AMAZON

Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton

"Home and Hearth was the motto of all women in the 17th Century, but Dutch Women, by the addition of a single word, made a huge difference in their lives. For the Dutch woman, the motto was HOME, HEARTH AND MARKETPLACE."

----Jean Zimmerman, The Women of the House

This essay concerns some truly--to me--new and surprising facts about the legal and social system of the Dutch founders of the New York Colony which I stumbled upon during my research on the origins of the Schuyler family. There were founding mothers, it seems, as well as founding fathers! It's another of those pieces of women's past that has only recently been resurrected and studied by historians and humble readers, too, like myself. It is so interesting I wanted to share what I learned in some detail.

MARGARET HARDENBROECK lived from 1659-1691. At the age of 22 this formidable lady arrived in New Amsterdam from Holland. Margaret, described by her biographer as a "Brute in Silks" came seeking her fortune, exactly like a man.  She did not come to America in the feminine role of domestic or wife, but in the high status position of Factor.  Her task in this booming frontier city was to collect debts for her employer, sell goods on consignment and--of greatest importance, discover and exploit new markets. Margaret was an employee of her wealthy cousin Wouter Volch and had been born into a trading family--nothing small time--for her family owned ships. She was already a seasoned employee who had represented her cousin in court many times, as plaintiff and as defendant. Obviously, she possessed a forceful bearing and excellent public speaking skills.

 

Among the Dutch, such a  woman was known as a She merchant. Unlike other 17th Century Europeans, the Dutch had a tradition of women in business. There were 134 female traders in New Amsterdam between 1653-63.  Even in the relative backwater at Albany there were 47 women traders. 

Business women were common in Holland because of a progressive legal system and other societal factors. First among these was their educational system. Boys and girls alike were universally educated. Bookkeeping, in this nation of traders, was an integral part of the curriculum.

Another unusual factor favoring women was the Dutch Reformed Church. Unlike other Christians, respect between partners in a marriage was stressed, not simply blind female submission. In England, at the same time, woman was, according to Doctrine "a weak creature not endued with like strength and constancy of mind." When an Englishwoman married, her husband owned her person and everything else, including her clothes and jewels. If widowed, she was granted the use of 1/3 of his property, but she could not sell it, as it belong to his heirs after she died.  We are all familiar with Jane Austen's world, in which a widow and her daughters are dispossessed by heirs, as in Sense and Sensibility.

MOST IMPORTANT FOR Margaret and women like her was Dutch Law, unlike that of any other European country at the time. Under English Law, for instance, women were not legal persons. They could not own property, sign legal documents or represent themselves in court. A single Dutch woman, on the other hand, had all those rights, the same that any single man hand. She even had options when contracting a marriage. 

IN HOLLAND there existed two forms of marriage. A woman decided which was the most advantageous when she drew up her marriage contract. The "Manus" was similar to English law. However, here 50% of the property of a deceased husband went to the widow and she could remain in the spousal residence. She was the ward of her husband who would represent her in business. However, in "Manus" financial responsibility too was limited. in the event of a failed business or deal. The legal reasoning was that if a woman had no authority to make transaction, why should she be held accountable? In practice, it was a respectable and common event for a Manus widow to place the house keys on the coffin of a deceased husband who had squandered her share of the community property of goods and walk away, free and clear.

 The alternative contract was called "Usus." This allowed a woman to retain all the rights she'd had while single, as well as the rights to any property she'd brought into the marriage, creating a partnership of equals. A Usus wife would appear in court as Plaintiff or defendant. She could represent her husband before a Judge. A prenuptial agreement signed with her husband circumvented the community property rule and the powers the Manus husband held over his wife. Wealthy widows--with that 50% rule operating in both forms of marriage--were common in Holland.

Dutch law also prohibited parents from relying upon gender or birth order when making their wills. This meant that daughters were not automatically deprived of an inheritance. In England, the firstborn sons received all of a family's major property holdings (land, houses). Daughters only received household goods (flatware and furniture.) Often, female heirs faced a future after a parent's death without a home or the assets with which to obtain one.

Dutch law also protected unwed mothers. A woman pregnant outside of marriage could either prosecute the alleged father or force him to marry her. If he was already married, she was entitled to demand a dowry and compensation for childbirth expenses, as well as child support. Historians report that women had a good chance of winning these suits. A husband's adultery, abandonment or contraction of a venereal disease also gave a wife grounds for requesting a divorce.

Spousal abuse also received attention under Dutch law. If a wife believed her husband was squandering her property, she had legal recourse to request her half of the estate along with her dowry in full. Regardless of whether she was married, a Dutch woman could institute legal proceedings against any individual, even her own husband. These pragmatic Dutch women brought their belief in Equality under the law as well as their education and training in business to New Netherland.

 When the English took over in 1664, they brought their laws; equal rights for women officially disappeared. Fortunately for the She Merchants, the original British rulers of the colony weren't sticklers. For several generations among those of Dutch descent, prenuptial contracts were still drawn while those women with commerce in their bones went on doing business by using their husbands as economic "beards."

When I discovered this fascinating chunk of Herstory, I was gobsmacked. All my life--and I thought I knew more history than the "average bear"-- I had imagined that English law was all there was or ever had been, here in these United States. This was (and is) something  to consider, in terms of our understanding of American history and also in relation to today, where to be born a woman is to be an "almost but not quite" full citizen, even here.   

Roger and Mary Philipse's Georgian NYC home,

now known as the Morris-Jumel Mansion

 To finish Margaret's story: The family founded by Margaret with her second husband (the first husband was a rich elderly mentor and family friend, the second an entrepreneurial craftsman in the shipping trade) would continue to be counted among the largest and richest of colonial landowners for generations.   In 1757 when George Washington was a young fellow on the make, he attempted to capture the fancy of Margaret' Hardenbroek's granddaughter, Mary Philipse, one of the richest heiresses in the colonies. Unfortunately, Mary Philipse married Roger Morris, who chose the British side during the Revolution, thereby losing all their property in America.   

~~Juliet Waldron

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REENACTMENT AT MONMOUTH

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I just went to the Battle of Monmouth last weekend in nearby NJ—although I was in no danger of being shot or impaled by a British dragoon. For a novelist, historical reenactments like this one are a unique kind of research. It’s one which, especially for the dedicated participants who volunteer their time to living history, functions as a full-on primitive camping trip, a personal exercise in experiencing the hard realities of “time travel.”

Kathy Fischer-Brown, who also writes the Revolution (The Serpent's Tooth Trilogy) did a lot of the work of getting us there, so she's the "we" and "us" in the following recitation.

At such events, you’ll find a group of dedicated history buffs portraying life as it was, in this case, during our now mythologized Revolution. These folks wear the clothes, made  of wool, muslin, and linen. They negotiate the territory wearing the one-shape-fits-both-left-and-right-foot shoes. After the “battle,” the men – and the women filling the ranks as foot soldiers--clean and oil their black powder flint locks, clean (puke!) the cannon. The “camp followers,” in reality, mostly poor women and their kids who would starve if they didn’t follow their soldier husbands, pluck chickens and scrape vegetables and use the cooking utensils—on the road, like this, mostly big black pots, knives, and iron cranes, to prepare their meals. Often, just as in the past, those big pots do double duty for food preparation.

At night they’ll sleep on the ground, with the marked exception of a few officers with camp cots. Washington, Lafayette and Joh Laurens are said to have slept under a tree together on the eve of this battle. On the British side, there will be tents and even the occasional officer’s lady/mistress, prettily parading at the encampment. On the American side, they’ll sack out in a group on hay strewn beneath a lean-to roofed with green branches. As much as possible, they walk the walk and talk the talk—and, this being summer in New Jersey—they sweat the sweat too.

Unlike the reenactment, the original Battle of Monmouth was not much fun. More soldiers are said to have died of heat prostration than bullets. And New Jersey was thoroughly beaten up in the American Revolution, marched and back and forth upon by both armies. (Only Massachusetts and Virginia may have suffered more.) The British Army, with a contingent of brutalized professional soldiers, plundered and raped indiscriminately. “…a day of rest and plunder,” is casually noted in the Visitor’s Center display, as the British Army who’d settled in the little town (then called Monmouth Courthouse) the day before the engagement. Don’t forget, though, that there was bad behavior by the Americans, too, under the cover of “Freedom’s Cause.” Violent militia groups with an ax to grind took advantage of local breakdowns of law and order in exactly the same way.  

This year at the Battlefield State Park, a young "soldier" reminded us that if you’d had a vote on The War of Independence—1/3 of the population would have been for it, 1/3 of the population against leaving the British Empire, and 1/3 just trying to stay the hell out of the way and get on with trying to farm their fields and raise their families. It must have been a long, dangerous, frightening eight years for all colonists.

However, June 18-19,  2016, was a great day to be at the place where all this history happened. Sunny skies brought out lots of people to take in the spectacle—the black powder display which seems to attract most of them.  They came in like a wave, and then, after the shooting was over and the acrid black powder smoke drifted away, departed.

After the crowd dispersed taking their small children, the hard core remains--folks like us who love history and the reenactors, who, I think, can lay claim to loving it even more. This is the time in which you may visit the encampments to observe and perhaps chat a bit while those in costume make their supper.  The reenactors Kathy and I have met are spectacularly devoted to their chosen task. (Calling it a "hobby" wouldn't be correct.) We saw entire families, from infants on up, at this “camping trip + time-travel”, everyone dressed appropriately.  Even little fifer boys of eight or nine are willing to play a part and give a history lesson.

Loyalist Rangers

One enjoyable facet of this reenactment at Monmouth was the number of young people enthusiastically and knowledgeably present.  Kathy and I enjoyed meeting the “smallpox survivors” who’d gone to the trouble of makeup to demonstrate active pocks, scaring, and boils.  Other young reenactors had constructed an ingenious in-ground cooktop, which conserved fuel and was less obvious from a distance than an open fire. (The reason, we were told, that you won't see this at a lot of other reenactments is that the Park personnel are usually not keen about folks digging holes.) Several pots of bubbling stew—a random assortment of vegetables and some chicken, with a bit of flour added, were being served, along with chunks of hearty bread.  

Laundry too "cooked" in a large "copper"—the heat and a bit of lye soap part of the sanitization process necessary for undergarments, this explained by the barefoot woman of the army busy stirring the pot. She and her sisters-in-arms were busy everywhere, all at work at some period appropriate task.   

In Sutler's Row, Lady Ellen showcases her talent as a seamstress; note what we'd call "mismatch."

BTW not a selfie in the background, but the heavy crook of her cane.

A pot full of chicken is seared.

         The in-ground cooktop/oven

Col. Hamilton was at Monmouth, an aide de camp who rode all day carrying messages around the battlefield for his commander-in-chief. (His doings, of course, brought about my original interest in the site.) Miscommunications and a lack of concerted movement by Gen. Charles Lee and Gen. George Washington turned the battle, begun so promisingly, into a kind of draw. This action, the longest single day's action in the war, was, nevertheless, an important moral victory for the Americans. Although the British continued on to their embarkation point at Sandy Hook, for the first time, the American army really stood up for itself against the military know-how of a far more mission-ready foe.

To close, if you write historical novels, there's a great deal to be learned at reenactments. Simply observing people wearing the clothing kick starts my writing process. Therefore, if you've never attended one, this summer would be a perfect time to start.

~~Juliet Waldron

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*With heartfelt thanks to everyone who participated in this marvelous day of living history, especially to the 2nd PA "The Regiment" The 43rd of Foot, who were so generous sharing their knowledge.

ANGELICA SCHUYLER ~ America's First Heart Throb

A Master Passion - A Founder's Marriage

Angelica, older sister to Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, was a piece of work. Perhaps you've met someone like her--enchanting, intelligent, daring, filled with boundless energy, bubbling over with wit. She was also a champagne tastes kind of gal who brought the party along with her, brightening any room she entered. Men and women alike adored her. She had admirers not only in America, but in France and in Britain, too, among them the leading lights of the time.  

The French Statesman Talleyrand, the Whig Leader, Charles Fox, the play-write Richard Brinsley Sheridan, as well as Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, and the Marquis de Lafayette were among the many luminaries who fell beneath her spell. 

We can no longer see the glamor in this picture of her and her first child, painted by Trumbull. Fashions in beauty change. In one letter to his father-in-law, Hamilton speaks of Angelica and his wife Elizabeth as "our brunettes." I'm not certain if Angelica had blue eyes or the melting black eyes of her younger sister.  Whichever, it was her animating high spirits, wit, and a killer sense of style which knocked 'em all dead. In her own time, she was known as "the thief of hearts."

While accompanying her husband to England, Angelica thrilled to visit the glamorous European capitols, to be introduced at the French Court and to meet the Prince of Wales et al, but she missed her warm extended family, too. Here's an excerpt from a letter she wrote to her brother-in-law, Alexander Hamilton:

“You are happy my dear friend to find consolation in words and thoughts. I cannot be so easily satisfied. I regret America. I regret the separation from my friends and I lament the loss of your society. I am so unreasonable as to prefer our charming family parties to all the gaieties of London…I shall send by the first ships every well written book that I can procure on the subject of finance…"

Good as her word, she sent our soon-to-be First Secretary of the Treasury a copy of Adam Smith’s seminal work on economics, The Wealth of Nations.

Angelica and Hamilton engaged in a life-long flirtation, evidence of which survives in any number of letters.

Hamilton playfully writes to her: "I seldom write to a lady without fancying the relation of lover and mistress. It has a very inspiring effect.”

Angelica writes: "Indeed, my dear, Sir if my path was strewed with as many roses as you have filled your letter with compliments, I should not now regret my absence from America.”

Note the odd placement of the comma. The romantic in Hamilton certainly did!

“...You ladies despise the pedantry of punctuation. There was a most critical comma in your last letter.  It is my interest it should have been designed; but I presume it was accidental…” and in return he signs: Adieu ma chere, Soeur.  A. Hamilton”

Though Hamilton's political enemies made a great deal of their public repartee, it seems highly doubtful that these two, for all their word-play round the subject, ever shared a bed.  For one thing, the Schuylers were a proud and tightly-knit family, all of whom, from beginning to end, whole-heartedly admired Hamilton. The sisters, Elizabeth and Angelica, loved and supported each other from the beginning of this triangular relationship to the end--and beyond.

Here is a letter Elizabeth wrote to her sister just after her departure to England: “My very dear beloved Angelica: I have seated myself to write to you, but my hearts is so saddened by your absence that it can scarcely dictate, my eyes so filled with tears that I shall not be able to write you much. Tell Mr. Church for me of the happiness he will give me in bringing you to me, not to me alone, but to fond parents, sisters, friends and to my Hamilton, who has for you all the affection of a fond own brother."

Speaking of Talleyrand and Chevalier Beaumetz, who had traveled to America to escape Madame Guillotine, Angelica call them: "Martyrs to the cause of moderate liberty…To your care, dear Eliza, I commit these interesting strangers. They are a loan I make you till I return to America, not to reclaim my friends entirely, but to share their society with you and dear Alexander the Amiable.

By my Amiable you know that I mean your husband, for I love him very much and, if you were as generous as the old Romans, you would lend him to me for a little while. But do not be jealous, my dear Eliza, since I am more solicitous to promote his laudable ambition than any person in the world and there is no summit of true glory which I do not desire he may attain, provided always that he pleases to give me a little chit-chat and sometimes to say I wish our dear Angelica was here…Ah! Bess! You were a lucky girl to get so clever and so good a companion.”

Thomas Jefferson by Mather, elegant at the French Court

Amusingly, Hamilton's chief political enemy, Thomas Jefferson, seems to have also fallen under the spell of the formidable Mrs. Church's, this during 1788, when he was America's ambassador in Paris. The Ancien Regime still ruled France at this time, although events were only an eye blink distant from the coming Revolution. Here is a graceful excerpt from a letter from Jefferson to Angelica: 

The morning you left us, all was wrong, even the sunshine was provoking, with which I never quarreled before. I took it into my head he shone only to throw light on our loss: to present a cheerfulness not at all in unison with my mind. I mounted my horse earlier than common. I took by instinct the road you had taken...

"I think I have discovered a method of preventing this dejection of mind on any future parting.
"It is this. When you come again I will employ myself in finding or fancying that you have some faults & I will draw a veil over all your good qualities if I can find one large enough."

Six months after, Jefferson begs Angelica to return to Paris and in August 1788 he seductively proposes that she accompany him on shipboard when they both return to America.

Think of it, my friend, and let us begin a negotiation on the subject. You shall find in me all the spirit of accommodation with which Yoric began his with the fair Piedmontese.


(The characters Jefferson refers to were in an erotically charged scene in Sentimental Journey, a best-selling novel of the day by English writer Laurence Sterne. Yoric is forced to share a room at a crowded Italian country inn with a lovely female stranger. These two characters will eventually have sex.)

"Let’s go back together then. You intend it a visit; so do I. While you are indulging with your friends on the Hudson, I will go to see if Monticello remains in the same place, or I will attend you to the falls of Niagara, if you will go with me to the passage of the Potowmac, the Natural Bridge, etc.,"

A decade later, Jefferson, then Vice President, is still trying: "... I shall entertain the hope that we may meet at this place, as on a middle ground. perhaps you may find it not unpleasant in winter to get this much nearer to the sun. but whether we meet or not, I shall for ever claim an esteem which continues to be very precious to me, and hope to be, at times, indulged with the mutual expression of it."

Lin-Manuel Miranda's hip-hop version of the Schuyler Sisters~

~Elizabeth, Angelica, Peggy~

But we're all overlooking Angelica's most important man--her husband. Biographers and armchair historians alike think of him as dull and boring. So apparently did Angelica after a decade of marriage.

In the beginning, however, John Barker Church was a handsome fast-talker, a down-on-his-luck aristocrat in America, fleeing the consequences of a duel and a host of unpaid debts. He courted his American princess under the cover of a war-time commissary business, using the alias 'Carter.'

After Major General Schuyler, her father, soon forbade the smooth-talking Englishman access to the house, but the damage was done. They eloped in classic style. One night, she climbed out the window and down a ladder into John's waiting arms.  Angelica's doubly patrician parents, (her mother was a van Rensselaer) were beyond furious. It took a year, stern interventions by Dutch grandparents, and a suitable offering in the shape of a son christened 'Philip', to reconcile them. 

It looks quiet today, but The Pastures, the Schuyler's home on the banks of the Hudson, was once the site of high romantic drama. Over the years, four thwarted and love-struck Schuyler daughters, one after the other, climbed out those upstairs windows into the arms of lovers.*

Once upon a time, before he became a successful insurance underwriter, (one who was by contemporary accounts was "fonder of premiums than payouts,") John Barker Church was a dashing rakehell with the scent of brimstone about him.  He seems to have been a type America loves--entrepreneur/con-artist. Once he reached America, his luck turned; all the cards went his way. He ended his Revolutionary War with a tidy fortune in his pocket. 

In the 18th Century it was more or less expected that graft would be a large part of the pay-off for a nimble supplier, so the tarnish--the unpaid soldiers of the Revolution and their blood-on-the-snow sufferings--didn't stick. From an aristocratic welcher, Church was, by the end of war, transformed into a man sufficiently wealthy to return to England with a colonial princess on his arm and with his pockets sufficiently full to "win" a seat in Parliament. 

In later years, letters sent by New Yorkers-in-the-know reported John Church's immense wealth as well as his appetite for underwriting all day and gambling all night. Both were occupations that, though fraught with risk, were also liable to bring immense rewards. For me, the picture that comes together is of a man of high intelligence and energy who had a positive delight in walking the edge--whether it was a bet laid upon the turn of a card or upon the successful return of a cargo of spices or a whaling ship.

Today, we call such people "thrill junkies," and perhaps this is the trait which brought Angelica and her husband together. From the number of passionate letters written to her that have survived, she thirsted for romance and was a mistress of leading on her admirers. Her looks, education, and brains ensured that she had but to crook a little finger and men came running. And why would we be surprised at her life-time of daring? She had, after all, climbed out that window, risking her honor and her future with a man whose real name she'd probably, even then, hadn't known.

~~Juliet Waldron

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*Elizabeth is the only daughter who was married (properly) at the house, because her sweetheart, Alexander Hamilton, was the only suitor for any of his girls of whom Philip Schuyler approved.