Fenimore To Finance Book
On 35 Hamilton-Burr Letters
$50K Grant Will Also Be Use To Digitize, Publicize
Collection That Inspired ‘Your Obedient Servant’
COOPERTOWN – The 35 letters between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr leading up to the fatal duel, owned by The Fenimore Art Museum, have been well-known to historians.
The song, “Your Obedient Servant,” in the hit Broadway museum “Hamilton,” made their content familiar to the general public.
Now, with $70,000 in grants from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, The Fenimore announced this week it will publish a book containing all the letters, will create a “virtual gallery” to make the letters available online, and is planning four public programs to explore and explain their significance.
The letters are “a national treasure,” said Douglas Ambrose, distinguished teaching professor of history at Hamilton College, who will author the upcoming book. He said the personal rivalry that led to the most famous duel in American history “will help today’s readers put into perspective our own fractious political world.”
The letters have not appeared in a single volume since “Interview in Weehawken” in 1960.
The programs will use print and the digitized letters to help small historical societies, libraries and schools tell the Hamilton-Burr story.
