![]() Times have changed - the 19th century's orphans are today's youth in foster care - but the mission remains true to Eliza Hamilton's original goals: to provide each child in their care with a strong foundation for life in a safe, loving, permanent family, and the opportunity and preparation to thrive in school, in their communities, and in the world. Now known as Graham Windham, it has evolved into an organization that supports hundreds of at-risk children and their families in the New York area. The OAS that Eliza Hamilton helped found continues today. When she died in 1854 at the remarkable age of 97 - over fifty years after her beloved Alexander - The New York Times wrote of her: "To a mind most richly cultivated, she added tenderest religious devotion and a warm sympathy for the distressed." She continued as directress until 1848 when she finally, reluctantly, stepped down at the age of 91, yet she never lost interest in the children she had grown to love. She took pride in each of of them, and delighted in their successes, including one young man who graduated from West Point. With her own sons and daughters now grown, these children became an extended family. In 1821, Eliza was named first directress (president), with duties that ranged from the everyday business of arranging donation for the children in her charge to overseeing the finances, leasing properties, visiting almshouses, and fundraising to keep the OAS growing. Children were provided not only with food, clothing and shelter, but also education and the skills of a trade so that they cold become independent and successful adults. With each year, the OAS grew larger, and was able to help more children, yet the goals of the OAS never changed. Completely alone, these children were often swept into dangerous or abusive situations with little hope of escape.Įliza and her friends would not abandon them. In greatest peril were children who arrived in the city as new orphans, their immigrant parents having died during the long voyage. While some New Yorkers prospered, many more fell deeper into poverty and disease, and it was often the children who suffered most. the harbor had made the city a major port, and goods and passengers arrived from around the world. In the first years of the nineteenth century, New York had grown into the largest city in America with a population of over 60,000, crowded largely into the winding streets of lower Manhattan. The OAS began with sixteen orphans, children rescued from a harrowing future in the city's streets or almshouses.īut Eliza and her friends realized that these first orphans must be only the beginning of their mission. In 1806, Eliza, Isabella Graham, and Joanna Bethune founded the Orphan Asylum Society in the City of New York (OAS). Her late husband had begun life as a poor and fatherless child, and orphans were always to hold a special place in her heart - and her energies. Financial difficulties - Hamilton had left her saddled with many debts - forced her to seek assistance from family and friends to support herself and her children, yet still she continued to help others. When Alexander Hamilton died after his infamous duel with Aaron Burr in 1804, Eliza was grief-stricken, but refused to fade into genteel widowhood. In 1797, she was one of the founders (with her friend Isabelle Graham and her daughter Joanna Graham Bethune) of the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children. ![]() She took in a young motherless girl who'd no place to go, and the child became part of her own family for years. She brought food, clothes, and comfort to refugees of the French Revolution, and to new widows after yellow fever epidemics. Born to privilege and married to Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, she still believed in helping others directly. ![]() Built on kindness and a genuine concern for the welfare of others, the legacy of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton (1757-1854) continues today because the same challenges that faced many children in 1806 unfortunately remain a part of our society in 2017.ĭuring her lifetime, Eliza Hamilton thought of the present, not posterity. Yet one New York woman's legacy still flourishes after more than two centuries. They're difficult to create, and even harder to maintain.
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