The other true story behind ‘Hamilton’
As the Broadway smash hits the West End, Harriet Alexander finds the descendants of the duelling protagonists are now firm friends
When Hamilton, the smash Broadway musical, finally opens in London this Thursday, it will be the biggest musical phenomenon to hit the West End in years. Its initial six-month run at the newly reopened Victoria Palace Theatre has long been sold out, and there are reports of tickets being re-sold at up to £6,000 a pop.
The person jointly responsible for Christmas coming early for West End touts, besides Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers whose life is the inspiration for the show, is the man who pulled the trigger on him.
The year was 1804, and Aaron Burr, the third vice-president of the newly independent country, had a spectacular falling-out with Hamilton, a brilliant 19th-century politician who seemed destined for the presidency. Burr challenged his political nemesis to a duel on the banks of the Hudson river, at Weehawken in New Jersey. Hamilton was shot in the stomach, dying in Manhattan the following day.
In 2015, Lin-manuel Miranda’s “cultural reimagining” of Hamilton’s biography, fusing American history with contemporary politics, and with period costume as well as hip-hop, soul and R’N’B show tunes, opened in New York to record crowds and rave reviews. It received a record-breaking 16 Tony nominations, taking home 11, and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama. A film adaptation based on the musical is now in the works.
But there’s another, perhaps even more remarkable twist in the story – two centuries on, the descendants of Burr and Hamilton have become firm friends. “We met entirely through serendipity,” says Antonio Burr, who is in his early 60s and lives in Manhattan.
Alexandra Hamilton-woods, 66, agrees. “We met by chance, probably around eight years ago. We are both psychologists, and met at a party. I don’t remember how we figured it out exactly – I suppose I remarked on his surname, and mine. It turned out we were also both members of the same canoe and kayak club in New York.”
The pair both speak with pride of their ancestors – Dr Hamilton-woods is the Founding Father’s four-times great-granddaughter on her mother’s side, while Mr Burr, raised in Chile, is a ninth-generation descendant of the former vice-president on the paternal line.
Yet until the musical took the United States by storm in 2015, their story had somewhat faded in the mists of time. Hamilton was born on the Caribbean island of Nevis around 1755, the illegitimate child of a Scottish father and a British-french Huguenot mother.
Orphaned as a child by his mother’s death and his father’s abandonment, Hamilton was taken in by an older cousin and later by a prosperous merchant family. His intelligence and spark was evident from a young age, and he was sponsored by a group of wealthy local men to travel to New York City to pursue his education.
Having trained as a lawyer,
Fusion: Hamilton mixes period costume with hip-hop, soul and R’N’B tunes
‘It turned out we were both members of the same kayak club in New York’
Hamilton would become one of seven men credited with founding the United States, working alongside John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and George Washington.
“Before the musical, the average American would probably know about Washington and Jefferson, and perhaps the Federalist Papers [essays that urged the ratification of the US constitution],” says Dr Hamiltonwoods. “But of Hamilton, they knew very little.”
That all changed with the publication of Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography, which inspired the ground-breaking hip-hop retelling of the story, with people of colour cast as the Founding Fathers.
“It’s a great, great play,” says Dr Hamilton-woods. “It’s so creative, and really captures the story. British audiences will love it. London is a very diverse city – I’ve spent a lot of time there – and Brits will be captivated by the story, which is unknown to most. The only downside is that it’s hard to get tickets.”
Indeed, two years after it opened on Broadway, tickets in New York are still selling for more than $200 (£149) at the box office, and bought 10 months in advance. So far, the musical has grossed more than $275million (£205million) at the Richard Rogers Theatre on Broadway, and Miranda – who left the title role in July – has recently announced a three-week run in Puerto Rico, to raise funds for his hurricane-battered homeland, in January 2019.
“British audiences will have never seen anything like this,” says Mr Burr of the musical. “It’s new, it’s novel, and I think it’s great. And it really is a Shakespearean tragedy, which I imagine British audiences will relish.
“Hamilton was an immigrant, and brought energetic new blood to America. If you look at what is happening in the States today, that is a powerful message.”
But Mr Burr, who played the role of Aaron Burr in a 2004 re-enactment of the duel to celebrate the 200th anniversary, remains resentful that his ancestor has gone down in history as a villain. After the duel, Burr saw out his vice-presidency but then his star faded, and he was charged with treason for allegedly plotting to take the Louisiana Purchase [a vast swathe of territory from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains that was acquired from France in 1803] for himself and set up a rival country. He was acquitted, but ruined politically and financially, and fled to exile in Europe – returning to New York in 1812 and living out his days in relative obscurity as a lawyer. He died in September 1836, aged 80.
“I’ve been through all the historical documents, the letters and so on,” says Burr, a member of the Aaron Burr Association and trustee of the Morris-jumel Mansion, Manhattan’s oldest house and home to Burr and his wife, Eliza. “And the story that has sprung up that Burr was a scoundrel, a murderer and all that… well, that’s Hamilton’s version. Hamilton was a brilliant guy, there is no doubt about that. He was the organiser of the state, the treasurer of the nation and without Hamilton, George Washington would have not got far. Hamilton had no doubt of the power of empire. We live in a Hamiltonian America. And Burr was the guy who could bring it all to an end. Over the years, we did quite a lot of work to prove that Burr was a complex character – he was not the straightforward villain of legend.”
I tell him his work sounds a lot like that of the Richard III Society, which fights to counter Shakespeare’s depiction of Richard as a Machiavellian monster. He is aware of the story of the “King in the car park,” he says, but unfamiliar with the society. I tell him they would get along royally.
Hamilton had eight children and Burr five, two of whom were adopted, and so descendants are numerous. Last year, at a Christmas gala to celebrate the show, eight of Hamilton’s direct relatives gathered to watch the play, and they meet up at occasional reunions. All have been delighted by the success of the musical.
“Anything that makes Aaron Burr more complex, more nuanced – I’m all for it,” said Mr Burr. “Lin-manuel Miranda listened to my concerns about the book, which I consider a hagiography, and I think he has treated him with respect, and done a wonderful job.”
Dr Hamilton-woods agrees. “I’ve had children coming up to me and saying they wish they were in the Hamilton family,” she said. “It’s wonderful they can find meaning in the story. Otherwise, it’s just dead history.”
‘Burr was not the straightforward villain of legend ’