Angelica Schuyler Church and Trinity

Angelica Schuyler Church, famous in her own time, and made more famous still by the Broadway musical Hamilton, led a life of political influence on two continents during the American Revolutionary era. 

With Alexander Hamilton as her brother-in-law, Revolutionary War General Philip Schuyler as her father, a maternal grandmother from the dynastic Livingston family — not to mention friends like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and the Marquis de Lafayette — Angelica was at the center of American history as the nation was founded. She even had a town named after her. A grave marker for her stands in the Trinity Churchyard. 

Born near Albany in 1756, Angelica and her 14 siblings, including the future Eliza Hamilton, came from wealth, both from Philip Schuyler’s side of the family and from Catherine Van Rensselaer, Angelica’s mother. Philip Schuyler enslaved an estimated two dozen people, a fact that led to the removal of a statue honoring him in front of City Hall in Albany in June 2023. According to recent research at the Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site, Angelica and her husband were also enslavers.

While her sister, Eliza Hamilton maintained a strong connection to Trinity Church, regularly bringing her children to Sunday services, not much is recorded about Angelica’s participation in parish life.  The one exception: Angelica was a baptism sponsor for her niece, Alexander and Eliza’s second child and eldest daughter, also named Angelica, who was born in 1784.

Angelica lived overseas for almost two decades after eloping with John Barker Church. In Europe, she became friends with noteworthy celebrities of the day, such as the British royal family, Franklin, Jefferson, and Lafayette. Her husband’s political appointments in France and England opened doors for her, but it was her reputation as a witty, generous person who was passionate about political affairs that cemented her friendships.

Angelica’s relationship with Alexander Hamilton was very friendly, even flirty. In a letter to Eliza, Angelica once wrote, “your Husband, for I love him very much and if you were as generous as the old Romans, you would lend him to me for a little while.” This line is interpreted by most historians as a joke between sisters. Their closeness is documented in dozens of letters between the two of them as well.

Sadly, it was Angelica’s husband’s pistols that killed both her nephew Philip Hamilton and her brother-in-law Alexander Hamilton in ill-fated duels — John Barker Church had provided his own firearms not only to Philip and Alexander, but also to George Eacker and Aaron Burr. After Alexander Hamilton died on July 12, 1804, his body was taken to the home of Angelica and her husband until Hamilton's funeral procession through New York to Trinity Church on July 14.

The graves of Alexander and Eliza Hamilton in the Trinity Churchyard are visited by thousands each year. Angelica’s exact final resting place is unknown, but a marker for her stands at the Livingston Family vault, near the western perimeter of Trinity’s north churchyard. 

Now, how about that town named after Angelica? 

When her family purchased a 100,000-acre tract of land in western New York, Angelica’s son Philip chose a site along the Genesee River to build a town and named it after his mother. The town of Angelica still exists in Alleghany County.

There is a measure of irony in the fact that the city named after the woman whom Lin-Manuel Miranda dubbed “the oldest and the wittiest,” a woman who could be legitimately called a socialite in New York, London, and Paris, was and is far away from big city life. The population of Angelica, New York in 2020 was 723.

This article is based on an earlier story by Jewel Tauzin in August 2021.