WIOTA — He was educated for a time at West Point, became a skilled surveyor and drove cattle from central Illinois through the wilderness to feed hungry troops in what is now Green Bay.
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These sleigh bells were a gift to William Hamilton in 1837 or 1838 from his mother Eliza, who made an arduous journey to Wisconsin from her home in New York when she was in her early 80s. The bells were donated to the Wisconsin Historical Society in 1858. Simone Munson, collections development director at the historical society, said the bells help tell the story of Hamilton's time in the state, where he came to mine lead in 1828.
Marion Howard, charter member of the Lafayette County Historical Society, looks over an 1829 map of Lafayette County that shows lead mines in the region. The book in the foreground, "Alexander Hamilton's Pioneer Son," published in 1930, details the life of William Hamilton and was written by Sylvan Muldoon of Darlington. Only 1,000 copies were printed.
The grave of Eliza Hamilton, seen in this 2017 photo, is in Trinity Church Cemetery in New York City and is next to the grave of her husband, founding father Alexander Hamilton. Eliza died in 1854. However, in the late 1830s, when she was in her early 80s, she visited her son, William Hamilton, in southwestern Wisconsin.
William Hamilton was just shy of his seventh birthday when his father, Alexander Hamilton, was killed in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey. The site along the Hudson River is now a memorial.
A sign marks the former site of the Hamilton Diggings Cemetery in Wiota, but no gravestones remain.
This rare map at the Lafayette County Historical Society in Darlington details the lead mines in the region in 1829 and shows the claim of William S. Hamilton. The site would later become the community of Wiota.
Steve Brenum, the former fire chief of Wiota who has studied the community's history, makes his way past a mural in front of Zimmerman Cheese that depicts Fort Hamilton. The fort was built by William Hamilton in 1832 during the Black Hawk War just a few hundred yards south of the cheese plant.
Letters about the life of William Hamilton were collected in the late 1800s by the Wisconsin Historical Society. They came from former neighbors in Lafayette County, family and even West Point Military Academy, where he briefly attended beginning in 1814.
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