Hamilton's Itinerarium
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Library of Congress Hamilton's Itinerarium HAMILTON'S ITINERARIUM A. D. 1744 IN ONE VOLUME HAMILTON'S ITINERARIUM BEING A NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY FROM ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND THROUGH DELAWARE, PENNSYLVANIA, NEW YORK, NEW JERSEY, CONNECTICUT, RHODE ISLAND, MASSACHUSETTS AND NEW HAMPSHIRE FROM MAY TO SEPTEMBER, 1744 BY DOCTOR ALEXANDER HAMILTON EDITED BY ALBERT BUSHNELL HART, LL.D. PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY LC PRINTED ONLY FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION BY WILLIAM K. BIXBY SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURI—MCMVII Copy 2 LIBRARY of CONGRESS Two Copies Received JAN 14 1908 Copyright Entry May 23, 1907 CLASS A XXc. No. 177571 COPY A. E 162 .H21 Copy 2 # 426 Copyrighted, 1907, By William K. Bixby All rights reserved THE DE VINNE PRESS v Hamilton's Itinerarium http://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbtn.02374 Library of Congress Amico suo honorando, divinitissimo domino Onorio Razolini, manuscriptum hocce Itinerarium, observantiae et amoris sui qualecumque symbolum, dat consecratque Alexander Hamilton. [ Translation: ] To his honourable and most Christian friend, Signor Onorio Razolini, this manuscript Itinerary is dedicated and consecrated as a slight token of his love and respect by Alexander Hamilton. vii The reader of the Itinerary of Doctor Alexander Hamilton will be interested in knowing something of the history of the manuscript. It was purchased by the present owner from Messrs. B. F. Stevens & Brown, of No. 4 Trafalgar Square, London. They purchased it from Frank T. Sabin, of No. 118 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, who states:— “The manuscript remained in the possession of the family of the Italian gentleman to whom it was dedicated, and to whom it was originally given, until within a few years. It then passed into the hands of an Italian bookseller, who sent it to a correspondent in London, from whom I purchased it. “Doubtless, owing to the rather obscure lettering on the back, it remained almost unnoticed for the last hundred years, or, on the other hand, it may have been preserved with reverent care by a generation or two of descendants, who finally, tempted by a good offer, parted with it. It will not do for me to indulge in too much fanciful conjecture. So far as facts are concerned, they are as stated above.” The present owner of the manuscript prints it for private distribution, believing that an unpublished manuscript of this period will be of interest to the parties to whom he sends it. Hamilton's Itinerarium http://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbtn.02374 Library of Congress W. K. B. Four hundred and eighty-seven copies of this work have been printed for private distribution only. The forms have been broken up and the type distributed. ix INTRODUCTION BY ALBERT BUSHNELL HART PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY Among the numerous journals and narratives of travel during the Colonial period, few are so lively and so full of good-humored comment on people and customs as the Itinerarium of Dr. Hamilton, which now for the first time has become known. The history both of the manuscript and of the writer is obscure. The original is a well-written and a remarkably well-spelled manuscript, covering both sides of sheets 6½ × 8½ inches, and making two hundred and seventy-eight pages. It is bound in vellum in a style unknown in America at that time, and therefore probably the work of an Italian book-binder. At the end is a statement that the manuscript was “Presented by Alexander Hamilton, Doctor of Medicine, to Onorio Razolini. Annapolis, Nov. 29, 1744.” This was two months after Hamilton returned to Annapolis, and it is probable that his Italian friend was a visitor there, and that he wrote a continuous manuscript from notes taken during his journey. It could hardly have been intended for publication at the time when written, for it is too free in comment on well known individuals. No reference is discoverable to the manuscript, either in the literature of the time or in later bibliographies; and it appears never to have been x consulted as a contribution to American history until acquired by Mr. Bixby. In preparing the manuscript for the press, the editor has had the efficient aid of two graduate students of Harvard University, Mr. Thomas N. Hoover has made a diligent search into the references to persons; and nearly all the important names have been placed in their proper setting, though some of the abbreviated names and obscure Hamilton's Itinerarium http://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbtn.02374 Library of Congress individuals resisted all effort to make them yield their identity. Mr. John Kennedy Lacock has followed the route of Hamilton throughout his journey, and has been been able to verify every place that he passed or visited, except some of the taverns which have long since ceased to exist; and the map accompanying this volume is the result of his researches. The editorial foot-notes have purposely been made succinct, the object being to state the full names of persons and places, with no detail except so far as necessary for identification. Hamilton's accuracy as a writer is shown by the fact that in only two or three cases, which are duly pointed out in the foot-notes, has he been detected in any serious mistake. The subject of this volume is a journey which Dr. Hamilton undertook in 1744, leaving Annapolis May 30, and travelling overland northward through New Castle, Wilmington, and Chester to Philadelphia. Mr. Hasell, of Barbadoes, whom he had expected to travel with him from Annapolis, he found at Philadelphia, where he stayed a week. June 13, he resumed his journey and spent three days on the road to New York, crossing the Delaware near Bristol, and passing through Trenton xi and Princeton to Perth Amboy; and thence, via three ferries, to Staten Island, across the Narrows, and across the East River to New York, that being apparently the surest and most convenient route. After six days in New York, he started, June 21, in a sloop for Albany, together with Rev. John Miln, formerly a clergyman in Albany. The journey up occupied nearly five days; he stayed about a week in and around Albany, and spent three days on the return sloop journey. After five days' stay in New York, July 5 to 10, he started eastward with two Boston merchants, journeying through Long Island to the neighborhood of Montauk Point, thence across the Sound to New London, and thence through Stonington, Newport, Bristol, and Dedham to Boston, the whole journey occupying eight days. At Boston he stayed ten days, and then, July 28, started northward, stopping at Marblehead, Salem, Ipswich, and Newbury, to Portsmouth and New Castle, and back by the same route, a week's journey in all. After about two weeks in Boston, he started southward August 18, going through Providence and Bristol to Newport, where he stayed a week. He resumed his travels August 24, passing New Hamilton's Itinerarium http://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbtn.02374 Library of Congress London, Saybrook, New Haven, and Norwalk to New York, a week's journey. The second visit in New York occupied two weeks; he left September 13, and after five days' stay in Philadelphia, reached home again September 27, having travelled, as he records it, 1624 miles. As to the author, throughout the Itinerarium he modestly refrains from discussion of his own family or condition and mentions his first name only in the dedication to his friend Razolini; but it is almost xii certain, in view of the fact that the manuscript in one place alludes to Mr. Dulany of Annapolis, that he was the Doctor Alexander Hamilton who, on May 29, 1747, was married to Margaret Dulany, daughter of Hon. Daniel Dulany; and that this lady was the widowed Mrs. Hamilton who in 1757 married William Murdock. Dr. Alexander Hamilton had a brother of whom he speaks as practising medicine in Maryland in 1727, and apparently still in Annapolis in 1744. Hamilton seems to have been fond of discursive writings, for he was the Historian of a society called the Tuesday Club in Annapolis, and has left several folio volumes in manuscript of a serio-comic history of that organization, which from the few specimens printed seem somewhat inferior to the Itinerarium in literary skill. The Itinerarium by chance allusions makes it certain that Hamilton was born in Scotland, and “learnt pharmacy” of David Knox, an Edinburgh surgeon. Some time in his life he travelled in England, and visited London. He practised medicine in Annapolis, but suffered a severe illness in 1743, so that he calls himself in one place a “valetudinarian”; and he made the journey in 1744 chiefly to recover his health. Of Annapolis he seems not to have been very fond; although he wrote home while on his travels, he records that for three months he received no news; and he alludes to the place as “a desolate expensive town,” and “that wretched city.” He was well acquainted in Maryland, where he had many friends and was in the habit of meeting visitors from other Colonies, some of whom were hospitable to him on his travels. He had means to xiii travel like a gentleman, with two horses, one of which carried his negro slave man, Dromo; and to live comfortably Hamilton's Itinerarium http://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbtn.02374 Library of Congress wherever he went. Dr. Moffatt, of Newport, he calls “an old acquaintance and school fellow of mine.” He took in the Physical News, of Edinburgh, a medical journal. Hamilton could speak Latin and a little French, the latter language he could also write with some facility; and he was interested in current and classical literature.