Laura: That was sobering to realize in that moment. And to wonder if it was a war that she won. I lingered a long time with my hand pressed to Eliza’s gravestone. Then I remember that we both sat together a long time by the root sculpture just outside the church commemorating an old sycamore that used to be there before it was destroyed by the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11. It was the first time we both began to envision her life story as one so intrinsically rooted in the darkest days and greatest triumphs of the country. I think we both felt sad as we reckoned with how many losses she really faced, even before the duel that took her husband’s life. That graveyard is where our original idea for a plucky historical heroine turned into something darker and deeper. Where we began to hope our words could be another sort of monument for Eliza.
Stephanie: Another place that affected me deeply was Morristown, New Jersey, where a local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution lovingly maintains the so-called Schuyler-Hamilton house where Eliza visited her Aunt Gertrude and was wooed by Alexander Hamilton. Given the beautiful little churches, the town square, and tales of winter balls, it was easy to imagine a charming winter courtship between the two of them. At least until I visited Jockey Hollow, where old military cabins still dot the forested hills. The realization that ten thousand men were freezing and starving to death—just out of sight of Washington and his officers—made a powerful impression. And given Eliza and Alexander’s lifelong dedication to charity and public service, it doubtless made an impression on them, too. In fact, the visit to Jockey Hollow forced us to rewrite the original lighthearted romance between them, and we reimagined their attraction as one between two very earnest young people in a very dark hour, both of them desperate to make the world a better place.
Laura: Our second research trip occurred later that year, and once again began in New York City, where we undertook research at the New-York Historical Society and New York Public Library. We got to handle one of Eliza’s letters, and getting to hold something she once held and seeing her signature across the page was another powerful moment. But first, we started at Weehawken, New Jersey, standing on that cliff’s height, looking down into the forested slope where Alexander Hamilton dueled Aaron Burr, lost his life, and left his devoted wife impoverished and alone to raise their seven surviving children. We wanted to see the city as Hamilton might have seen it, and to experience the sights and sounds that might have filled his mind in those fateful moments. But in the end, we knew that our novel was not a novel about Alexander Hamilton. It was about his wife. We wanted to understand her journey. And that’s what took us to upstate New York.
Stephanie: I was a little skeptical at first that we needed to visit the battlefields of Saratoga, because we have no evidence that Eliza was ever there. We had a great day in the museum, acquainting ourselves with the battles and trying on Revolutionary War costumes before walking the fields where Benedict Arnold was so fatefully injured in our cause. And the trip ended up being an important piece of our understanding of Eliza as a general’s daughter and a girl raised at the frontier. Understanding her world and the way the war was literally on her doorstep gave us a richer understanding of who she came to be, and how she might have envisioned herself as part of the struggle of the soldiers around her. She lived all her life on the Hudson River and that river turned out to be the key to winning the war.
Laura: Our last stop, and in some ways, the most meaningful, was in Albany. We attended a little festival at Fort Crailo where Eliza’s mother, Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler, came of age and acquainted ourselves with New Netherlander food, traditions, and customs. One thing that certainly stood out for us was the relative strength and independence of New Netherlander women. It was a reminder to us that the roles and rights of women in early America varied significantly amongst the colonies. Because of their cultural heritage, Eliza and her sisters had more options and autonomy than many women of the time period—certainly more than the women in Virginia we portrayed in America’s First Daughter. The Schuyler sisters knew women in Albany who remained unmarried by choice and lived as property holders without any man to rule over them. Even without the revolutionary ideas swirling about their dinner table, they may have come to expect to have a choice in who they married and how they lived their lives. Perhaps that’s why so many Schuyler daughters eloped against the wishes of their parents.
Stephanie: Our last stop was the Schuyler Mansion where Eliza and her family made their home. And that was only right, because Eliza spent much of her married life with Alexander there, too. In our research field trips we often get a feeling of a place. An impression or a mood. When we visited Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello while writing America’s First Daughter, we were overcome with a sense of bittersweet majesty. The Schuyler Mansion, a gorgeous Georgian mansion overlooking the Hudson River, had a feeling of quiet tranquility to it. We could easily imagine why Eliza spent so many summers there with her children. It must have been a relief to get away from the hustle and bustle of political life in the city. Nevertheless, there is no getting around the fact that it was a plantation where more than a dozen enslaved persons toiled for the happiness of the family, and though little evidence of their presence remains on the site, our guide Danielle was a wealth of information
