{"id":17819,"date":"2020-11-15T10:02:35","date_gmt":"2020-11-15T16:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myboysay.com\/blog\/?p=17819"},"modified":"2020-11-15T10:02:35","modified_gmt":"2020-11-15T16:02:35","slug":"the-untold-story-of-jeremiah-g-hamilton-wall-streets-first-black-billionaire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myboysay.com\/blog\/?p=17819","title":{"rendered":"The Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street’s First Black Billionaire"},"content":{"rendered":"
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THE $250,000,000.00 NEW YORK CITY PRINCE OF DARKNESS<\/a><\/h1>\n
The Untold Story of Jeremiah Hamilton, Wall Street’s First Black Billionaire<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cThere is no known image of Hamilton. Not an oil painting, a sketch, not even a photograph. He almost certainly did have photographs taken, and quite likely commissioned a painting, but if any likenesses have survived they are probably catalogued under \u2018miscellaneous\u2019 or as \u2018subject unknown.\u2019 \u201d<\/strong><\/blockquote>

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Jeremiah G. Hamilton was the only African American broker on Wall Street and the only black millionaire in mid-nineteenth century New York. At the time, black intellectuals disparaged his relentless pursuit of wealth as crass and undignified. American historians would also shun Jeremiah Hamilton, ignoring his prominence in Wall Street during the 1840s and 50s. Today he is all but forgotten.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet in his lifetime, Jeremiah Hamilton was larger than life, anything but a reticent figure lost in the background. Indeed, he left a pretty hefty footprint on the historical record: there are tens of thousands of words of newsprint about him and, in the archives, well over 50 court cases involving Hamilton as either plaintiff or defendant. His life provides a unique and illuminating insight into black life in New York, before and during the Civil War.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Surviving details of Jeremiah Hamilton’s early years are contradictory. Contemporary newspaper articles claimed he was born of free parents in Richmond Virginia. However his death certificate stated he was born in the West Indies and listed Port-au-Prince as the birthplace of his parents. Certainly, Hamilton was highly literate, numerate, fluent in French and bristling with ambition. \u201cJeremiah Hamilton’s past was malleable, something to be used as he saw fit and, most of all, deployed to his advantage,\u201d observed his biographer Shane White, author of Prince Of Darkness.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hamilton first made his mark in the counterfeiting trade. In 1828, at just 21 years of age, he ran a large cargo of counterfeit coins from Canada through New York into Haiti for a consortium of prominent New York merchants. Haitian authorities discovered the scam and Hamilton was very nearly caught.\u00a0Counterfeiting was an offense punishable by death in Haiti and a judge sentenced him, in absentia, to be shot. Proclamations nailed to posts all over the island offered a $300 reward for his capture.\u00a0For 12 days,\u00a0Hamilton lurked around Port-au-Prince harbor until he could escape on board a vessel bound for New York.<\/strong><\/p>\n

By the time of the Great Fire of 1835, one of the most destructive events in the city\u2019s history, Hamilton was living in New York and renting an office on Wall Street. He profited handsomely from the disaster, taking pitiless advantage of several victims of the fire to pocket some $5 million in today\u2019s currency. Within months he invested heavily in New York\u2019s real estate boom, buying 47 lots of land at Hallet\u2019s Cove, in present-day Astoria, and docks, wharves and tracts of land up the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cNo one will ever erect a statue honoring Jeremiah Hamilton. He was no saint.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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