Jeremiah G. Hamilton (sometimes Jerry Hamilton) was a Wall Street broker who was listed as "the only black millionaire in New York" by James McCune Smith about a decade before the American Civil War. Hamilton was an intelligent financial agent, amassing the $ 2 million ($ 44.6 million at present) wealth at the time of his death in 1875. Although he was the subject of much newspaper coverage and his life provided a unique perspective on races in 19th-century America. , Hamilton is virtually nonexistent from modern historical literature.
Hamilton first became famous in 1828 after hiding in a fishing boat for several days at Port-au-Prince harbor in Haiti and finally escaped from Haitian authorities. They have found him transporting counterfeit coins to Haiti reported to a group of New York merchants; in absentia he was sentenced to be shot. The vessel he rented, Ann Eliza Jane , was seized by the harbor officer; Hamilton claims he has escaped with a fake coin of $ 5000.
Nearly a decade later, after the 1835 Great New York Fire destroyed most of the buildings in the far southeast of Manhattan, Hamilton earned about $ 5 million in 2013 dollars by "taking advantage of some fire victims' misfortunes". His business practices are controversial; where most black entrepreneurs sell their goods to other blacks, "Hamilton cut a swath through the lily-white New York business world in the mid-1830s, a domain in which his depredation soon earned him the nickname" The Prince of Darkness " , with a little more affection, just called him Hamilton.After that, he used about $ 7 million to buy large amounts of land and property in the modern Astoria and Poughkeepsie.Tempur will continue to go hand in hand with Cornelius Vanderbilt, a famous American, industrialist, master the Transit Accessory Company.
Though he circulated among the financial elite and himself very wealthy, Hamilton also became a victim of racism against African-Americans who so pervasive during his time. During the New York City draft riots of 1863, the white man who attempted to kill Hamilton entered his home, but was rejected only with his liquor, cigars and old clothes by his wife Eliza after she said that her husband was not home. Eliza Hamilton is white who made her marriage to Jeremiah taboo for the time being.
At the time of his death in May 1875, Jeremiah Hamilton was said by the obituary to become the richest black man in the United States. She is buried in her family's place at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
No picture is still alive from Jeremiah Hamilton. When the biographer Shane White has reasoned, Hamilton "almost certainly has a photo taken, and most likely assigns a painting, but if there is a survival resemblance they may be cataloged under 'miscellaneous' or as 'unknown subject'."
The income he earned was somewhere around a fortune of about $ 250 million in those years.
Video Jeremiah Hamilton
Legacy
- Biography 2015 "Prince of Darkness" by Shane White tells the life of Jeremiah G. Hamilton.
- Hamilton is featured in the successful African-American Succession Documentary series.
Maps Jeremiah Hamilton
References
External links
- Who is Jeremiah Hamilton?
- Biography of Jeremiah Hamilton by Shane White
- Shane White discusses the life of Jeremiah Hamilton
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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