Elizabeth Leigh (Reed) Hamilton (1891 - 1966)

Born 4 Oct 1891 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Ancestors

Wife of Thomas Lyon Hamilton Jr. — married 27 Aug 1910 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Descendants

Died 11 Jul 1966 at age 74 in Garden City, NY, USA

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Katherine Hunter [send private message]

Biography

Elizabeth attended Oldfields School, a private boarding school for girls in Baltimore County, Maryland. A family story has it that Wallis Simpson was a classmate.

There is a story in the family that the Reeds were Episcopalian and quite wealthy. They employed recently immigrated Irish Catholics as servants, including in the nursery. Sarita and her sister Elizabeth were converted to Catholicism by these servants, which caused upset within the family. But Sarita went on to become a Catholic nun and the descendants of Elizabeth were raised as Catholics for three generations.

Elizabeth was known as "Mimi" to her descendants. She had two sets of fraternal twins, the first set of which died young. Her marriage was not a happy one. She had eloped with Thomas Lyon Hamilton at the young age of 19. Her family was not pleased with the marriage. It did not take long for problems to emerge. Hamilton was from a family of some means, though he gambled to great excess and never held a job.

Her husband abandoned her and her three youngest daughters around 1914. Her family supported her and her children, though grudgingly, taking them to Europe where they moved frequently around the continent. A variant on the religious conversion story is that during their time in Europe, the girls studied various religions, with a view to selecting the best one to adopt as their own. They apparently considered Buddhism, Judaism and various sects of Christianity. Why they chose Catholicism is unclear, though by this time they had an aunt who was a devoted Catholic nun. They also had an Italian and therefore presumably Catholic governess, of whom they were extremely fond, during their time in Italy.

Thomas left the US to volunteer in the British services during World War I, leaving Elizabeth with small children to care for. Long after her marriage broke down, Elizabeth had a son by an Italian man of unknown identity. To conceal her pregnancy and avoid the social stigma of illegitimacy, she gave birth to the boy in Europe and returned to the US with a story of having adopted him. She never obtained a legal divorce from her husband, though the marriage existed only in a legal sense for many years.

Mimi died at 115 Kingsbury Rd, Garden City, Long Island, New York, USA, the home of her daughter, Charlotte Reed (Hamilton) Frigerio. She is buried at Holy Rood Cemetery, Westbury, New York.

The family is recorded in the 1920 Census for San Diego, district 0352 as living in a rented home on Scimitar Dr. The household included Sarita Elizabeth Bond Potter, widowed and age 53 as head of household, with her daughter Elizabeth Leigh Hamilton, age 28, and granddaughters Beatrice and Charlotte (7-year-old twins) and Sarita McCall, age 6. Sarita Elizabeth Bond Potter's father is recorded as a native speaker of English, her mother of Spanish, and Spanish is recorded as her first language although she spoke English. Elizabeth Leigh Hamilton and the children spoke English. S.E.B. Potter was born in Uruguay, as was her father. Her mother was born in Mexico. All members of the household were born US citizens. The twins were born in Pennsylvania and the child Sarita in New York.

Sources

• Personal family history in possession of Hunter-4624.
• 1920 Federal Census for San Diego, district 0352