I know this is blasphemy to musical theater lovers, but when I saw Hamilton, my first thought was, “I wish this play was about Eliza.” No disrespect to Alexander, but when it comes to the American Revolution, we’ve heard the men’s stories before. A lot. Like twelve years of school worth. Plus, it’s thanks to Eliza that we even have a Hamilton musical. She fought to get Alexander’s first biography written and carefully saved the relevant documents.
So when I found Tilar J. Mazzeo’s biography of Eliza – the first ever – I was ecstatic. And as I suspected, Eliza was kind of a badass. She grew up in the frontier wilderness and was a total tomboy. She also spoke Mohawk and went to Native American negotiations with her father. She, and all the women of her family, held shit down. And they got no credit for it. Because, yay, womanhood.
I interviewed Tilar and Catherine Allgor, the director of the Massachusetts Historical Society, for an article about the Hamilton women. You can read it in Exhale magazine. It turns out there’s a lot in Hamilton that was either wrong or wasn’t mentioned. For example, the fact that none of the women in Hamilton’s time were legally considered people.
I’ll digress before I launch into a feminist tirade but if you’re looking for one of the sides of history that never gets told, this is a great book. It reads like an exciting novel but it’s all, of course, 100% factual, so you can drop these stories to sound smart at your next cocktail party.
The book comes out on September 18, but you can pre-order from the usual suspects, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.