Where do they come from? What's their story?

They are of Dutch – there was a substantial Dutch population in Schuyler.

America and the American colonies, particularly in New York State, but also in Pennsylvania, to a certain extent, New Jersey, all the kind of middle Atlantic states, they were settled by or colonized by the Dutch West India Company, who once Henry Hudson had explored the New World, they saw this extraordinarily fecund area just teeming with wildlife and native fruits in one thing and another.

Henry Hudson wrote rhapsodically about what they found there.

And although he himself, this is in the 17th century, had hoped to use America as a means to find a passage to the Asian countries for spice trade.

It's those who came after him who founded the West India Company who saw, no, no, no, this is, it doesn't matter if this is not going to lead us to the spice islands.

This is an incredible opportunity.

Her fingerprints.

Yeah.

Um, the case of Hamilton and John Laurens, she knew very little about this, um, if anything.

Um, all she knows is that Hamilton has a great friend, who may or may not have been a closer friend than she knows, and then he dies.

She never meets him.

Um, and so that's not, that's not an issue for her, really.

Maria Reynolds is a whole other thing.

Um, Hamilton's infidelity with Maria Reynolds, which is also, apart from whatever he had going on with Angelica, th- the only documented case of Hamilton's having a sexual relationship with someone other than his wife, is his relationship with Maria Reynolds, who lured him into this relationship when Eliza was away for the summer in Albany, with sick children, a sick child.

Why was it so hard for her to have Hamilton remembered this way?

Mm.

She was not [chuckles] gonna find someone like that very easily, um, in wartime in Albany.

What she did find was, and again, this is a period when women are reading, young women are reading novels full of romance, and excitement, and elopements, and duels, and this and that and the other.

And what should come to Albany, but a mysterious Englishman who had transplanted himself to America, a sympathizer to the revolution.

He has given himself to the Continental Congress.

He is working as an auditor.

He has been sent by the Continental Congress to Albany to audit the books of General Philip Schuyler, whom the Continental Congress suspects of fraud, waste, and abuse, I think.

Hmm