Beautiful but supercilious, she married her cousin, a deeded landowner of staggering wealth. Peggy Schuyler Van Rensselaer fares worse. One admirer called her “muse, confidante, and thief of hearts.” Yet until the musical, she was barely remembered. The brilliant and witty Angelica Schuyler Church married a wealthy British politician and moved in high political and social circles in both Europe and America. The record isn’t any better when it comes to her sisters. Good-natured and devout, she spearheaded the building of the Washington Monument, opened the first private orphanage in New York City, and raised seven children on her own. That omission is unfortunate, because she was a remarkable woman. Early biographers of her husband barely mention her. Almost none of her own correspondence survives. Information on her is disappointingly scarce. After her husband’s death in a duel in 1804, Eliza spent the rest of her life recovering the stories of his achievements, but keeping herself out of the limelight. The women themselves put the spotlight firmly on men. He makes Hamilton’s wife Eliza and her sisters Angelica and Peggy integral to Hamilton’s biography. That part of the story can’t be told without women, and Miranda brings women in. Many who barely knew his name ten years ago now talk about his work fighting in the war as a soldier, establishing our national financial system, writing the Federalist Papers, and butting heads with Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Monroe, among many others.īut the musical is also about history and how it gets written. Hamilton’s roles as a soldier in the American Revolution and as a Founding Father of the United States are being discussed on a scale not seen since his lifetime.
Thanks to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit musical Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton is back in the public eye. Leslie Goddard portrays all three very different women – without ever leaving the stage. They and our other Founding Mothers could not vote or own property, but they were fervently patriotic and passionate women whose tireless pursuits on behalf of their families – and their country – proved just as crucial to the forging of a new nation as the rebellion that established it.Īlthough best known by the men they married, Hamilton’s wife and sisters-in-law were unmistakably Revolutionary. From glittering inaugural balls to bloody street riots, amidst the powder keg of the early days of the Revolution, the Schuyler sisters are at the center of it all – including political treachery and scandal. They dressed in the latest fashions and were courted by the most powerful men. The Schuyler sisters, Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy – daughters of the wealthy Philip Schuyler, Revolutionary War general and later U.S. All three Schuyler sisters portrayed by Leslie Goddard from Chicago, IL
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