RICHMOND, Va. — When Virginia Sen. Donald McEachin made an offhand comment during dinner about his distant relation to Alexander Hamilton, it drew a shocked reply from a colleague who also claims to be a descendant of the Founding Father: “Hold on. You’re kidding me.”
No kidding, McEachin — who is black — told Sen. Chap Petersen, who is white. Both lawmakers are Democrats and already were friends before learning they might share a common lineage.
Proving the relationship with certainty is difficult.
Hamilton — the arch nemesis of Thomas Jefferson, who hated Hamilton’s idea of a strong central government — was famously killed in a duel with Jefferson’s vice president, Aaron Burr.
The saga of Hamilton’s connection to two 21st-century lawmakers goes back to his birth around 1755 on Nevis, an island in what was then the British West Indies. His parents were not married to each other.
Hamilton’s father deserted the family, and his mother died when he was around 11, leaving him orphaned and penniless. He spent time on two other Caribbean islands, St. Kitts and St. Croix, before emigrating to New York.
McEachin’s maternal grandfather, an Episcopalian minister named Aston Hamilton, was born and grew up on St. Kitts before emigrating to Virginia as a young man in the early 20th century.
McEachin, of Henrico County, acknowledges that he can’t prove a family link to Hamilton, but he isn’t ready to give up on the legend.
“He may have been reluctant to divulge his African ancestry” in an era when slavery was legal and even free blacks had few rights, McEachin said. “If he covered up his past, who could blame him?”
