Note 57 — Front matter (continued 3)

(page page 112).—William Stephen Hamilton, the sixth child of the famous Alexander Hamilton, was born August 4, 1797. In 1814 young Hamilton entered the West Point Military Academy, but resigned in 1817, having received an appointment on the staff of Colonel William Rector, then surveyor-general of Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas. He appears to have resigned after a few years of service, and sought his fortune in what is now Wisconsin. We first hear of him in Wisconsin in 1825, when he bought a herd of cattle in Illinois and drove them overland to Green Bay, via Chicago, for sale to the garrison at the former place. Two years later he appeared in the lead mines, toward which was then a heavy emigration, and settled at and founded what is now Wiota, La Fayette County. He at once took high rank among the mine operators of the region. In 1827 he commanded a company of volunteers in the Red Bird uprising, and during the Black Hawk War (1832) commanded a company of rangers. Emigrating to California in 1850, enticed thither by the gold excitement, he settled on a large ranch near Red Bluff, Tehama County, where he died about 1865. At first buried upon the ranch, his remains were later removed to Sacramento, but the exact location of the grave is now unknown. While at Wiota he was visited by his aged mother and one of his sisters, then residing at Washington, D. C. By his Wisconsin contemporaries, Hamilton was ranked as a profound thinker; but his ambition to become a member of the state constitutional convention failed, because his views were thought to be too aristocratic to enable him to be a wise law-maker for a frontier commonwealth. His various business enterprises were unfortunate in their result.