Alexander Hamilton was most likely born January 11, 1755 on the island of Nevis, located in the West Indies. The exact date of Hamilton’s birth is unknown. There is no known birth certificate or baptismal record filed for him. The only known document in print concerning his birth states his age as 13 in 1768. An interesting fact surrounding Hamilton’s birth is that he was the younger of two illegitimate children born to Rachel Faucett Lavien and James Hamilton. The reason that Alexander and his brother James were illegitimate was because when their mother was very young, she had been married to a Danish proprietor of St. Croix named John Michael Levien. She did not become divorced from John Michael Levien until June 25, 1759. During her divorce hearing she was forbidden by Danish law to ever remarry. Her husband declared her to be a whore because she had given birth to two illegitimate children. His father was supposedly a stunning Scottish merchant, but he proved to be rather irresponsible, ultimately abandoning his family in 1765.
During his early years in life, things weren’t that spectacular for Alexander and James. Because their father had abandoned them, their mother was forced to open a store in order to care for her two young sons. Alexander got his first taste of finances through his mother’s store. She employed him as her bookkeeper and a clerk. The family was not at the top of the social ladder; in fact they were quite close to the bottom. Alexander and his brother James were most likely taunted by the townspeople for being “whore children”. When his mother died somewhere around 1768 of yellow fever, her husband John Michael Levien sued her estate for all her assets, thus preventing her “whore children” from receiving any benefits that her few belongings might bring them.
Hamilton didn’t have very much formal schooling, but he did have excellent knowledge of French, due to his mother’s teaching. This was not a normal trait of...