You may be familiar with the statues of the Hamilton sisters in Headwaters Park but did you know the History Center is home to a collection of artwork by the Hamilton Family? Here are three pieces by Jessie Hamilton. Two are new to the collection as of this year and one has called the History Center home for many years. Enjoy!
Print Room Talks: The Hamilton Family by the Fort Wayne Museum of Art Premiered Nov 17, 2021 on YouTube Almost two thirds of the FWMoA permanent collection are prints and other works on paper. The processes and techniques of printmaking are vast and can be highly technical, making this medium both fascinating and mystifying for many. During Print Room talks we will examine examples of printmaking techniques up-close and learn about artists from the permanent collection, who chose to work with these different printmaking processes.
Print Room Talks are led by Curator of Prints and Drawings Sachi Yanari-Rizzo.
The processes and techniques of printmaking are vast and can be highly technical, making this medium both fascinating and mystifying for many. During Print Room Talks, we examine examples of printmaking techniques up-close and learn about artists from the permanent collection and their processes.
We explore the artistic side of Fort Wayne’s illustrious Hamilton family, including the prints and drawings by Norah (sister to Alice and Edith Hamilton), cousins Jessie and Agnes, and the museum’s great benefactor, James Hamilton.
The name Alice Hamilton is widely known due to her involvement with movements such as the Jane Addams Hull House. However, Alice is just one of many highly accomplished Hamilton women. Fort Wayne owes much to this artistic, activist family. Learn more in 200@200 - Iconic Fort Wayne: The Extraordinary Hamilton Women [1910s Margaret Hamilton Print]
One of the Hamilton Sisters. Alice Hamilton - February 27, 1869 – September 22, 1970, second child of Montgomery Hamilton (1843–1909) and Gertrude (née Pond) Hamilton (1840–1917), was born on February 27, 1869, in Manhattan, New York City, New York. She spent a sheltered childhood among an extended family in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where her grandfather, Allen Hamilton, an Irish immigrant, had settled in 1823. He married Emerine Holman, the daughter of Indiana Supreme Court Justice Jesse Lynch Holman, in 1828 and became a successful Fort Wayne businessman and a land speculator. Much of the city of Fort Wayne was built on land that he once owned. Alice grew up on the Hamilton family's large estate that encompassed a three-block area of downtown Fort Wayne. The Hamilton family also spent many summers at Mackinac Island, Michigan. For the most part, the second and third generations of the extended Hamilton family, which included Alice's family, as well as her uncles, aunts, and cousins, lived on inherited wealth. Copied from Alice Hamilton on Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
She spent a privileged childhood in Fort Wayne in the 1870's and eventually enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1892 after studying anatomy at Fort Wayne College of Medicine the prior year. Hamilton went on to become a leader in the fields on industrial toxicology and occupational health. An activist for women's rights and peace, Hamilton became an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School in 1919 and later served as president of the National Consumers League from 1944-1949. She died in 1970 at the age of 101. Copied from FORT WAYNE FIVE: Important medical figures published with photo April 9, 2018 in The News-Sentinel newspaper.
In a time of booming production and thousands of new factories buzzing across America, Alice Hamilton was arguably the first American physician to take a professional interest in the health and safety of workers—and one of the first to try to make American industries safer.
One of the Hamilton Sisters. Edith Hamilton was born August 12, 1867, Dresden, Saxony [now in Germany]—died May 31, 1963, Washington, D.C., U.S. The eldest child of American parents Gertrude Pond (1840–1917) and Montgomery Hamilton (1843–1909). Shortly after her birth, the Hamilton family returned to the United States and made their home in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where Edith's grandfather, Allen Hamilton, had settled in the early 1820s. Edith spent her youth among her extended family in Fort Wayne.
Happy birthday to Fort Wayne's own Edith Hamilton, born on this day in 1867. She earned fame as "the greatest woman Classicist" with her books, including "The Greek Way," which Robert Kennedy turned to for comfort after the death of his brother John Kennedy. "I came to the Greeks early," Hamilton told an interviewer when she was 91, "and I found answers in them. Greece's great men let all their acts turn on the immortality of the soul. We don't really act as if we believed in the soul's immortality and that's why we are where we are today."
She earned fame as "the greatest woman Classicist" with her books, including "The Greek Way," which Robert Kennedy turned to for comfort after the death of his brother John Kennedy. "I came to the Greeks early," Hamilton told an interviewer when she was 91, "and I found answers in them. Greece's great men let all their acts turn on the immortality of the soul. We don't really act as if we believed in the soul's immortality and that's why we are where we are today."
Edith's grandfather, Allen Hamilton, was an Irish immigrant who came to Indiana in 1823 by way of Canada and settled in Fort Wayne. In 1828 he married Emerine Holman, the daughter of Indiana Supreme Court Justice Jesse Lynch Holman. Allen Hamilton became a successful Fort Wayne businessman and a land speculator. Much of the city of Fort Wayne was built on land he once owned. The Hamilton family's large estate on a three-block area of downtown Fort Wayne included three homes. The family also built a home at Mackinac Island, Michigan, where they spent many of their summers. For the most part, the second and third generations of the extended Hamilton family, which included Edith's family, as well as her uncles, aunts, and cousins, lived on inherited wealth. Copied from Childhood and eduction at Edith Hamilton on Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
“It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought—that is to be educated."
In American Classicist, Victoria Houseman tells the fascinating life story of Edith Hamilton (1867–1963), whose ideas were shaped by—and aspired to shape—her times. Preorder yours today!
Available in North America on October 3 (UK/Europe 28 November pub).
Out October 3, American Classicist by Victoria Houseman is a biography of Edith Hamilton, the remarkable woman whose bestselling #Mythology has introduced millions of readers to the classical world.
Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) didn’t publish her first book until she was sixty-two. But over the next three decades, this former headmistress would become the twentieth century’s most famous interpreter of the classical world. Today, Hamilton’s Mythology (1942) remains the standard version of ancient tales and sells tens of thousands of copies a year. During the Cold War, her influence even extended to politics, as she argued that postwar America could learn from the fate of Athens after its victory in the Persian Wars. In American Classicist, Victoria Houseman tells the fascinating life story of a remarkable classicist whose ideas were shaped by—and aspired to shape—her times.
Preorder your copy today! (UK/Europe 28 November pub).
Fort Wayne's Edith Hamilton (1867-1963), the "most important interpreter of the classical world for 20th-century Americans," is the subject of a new biography by VIctoria Houseman. The book, "American Classicist" is reviewed by Meghan Cox Gurdon in this weekend's Wall Street Journal.
From Fort Wayne to Munich: The Education of Edith Hamilton
Date(s) - Jun 2, 2024 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Location The History Center
Presented by Victoria Houseman
We will see how aspects of Edith Hamilton’s writing were influenced by her education, which began at home in Fort Wayne. This was followed by her experiences at Miss Porter’s School and four more years of study at home before she was able to enter Bryn Mawr College in 1891. Her classics professors at Bryn Mawr, Paul Shorey and Gonzalez Lodge, both left a discernible influence upon her writing, as did her year of graduate study in Germany, where she ultimately became the first woman officially admitted to the University of Munich. This presentation will use Edith Hamilton’s letters to question some of the assumptions which have appeared in previous writings about Edith Hamilton.
Book signing to follow lecture.
The Edith Hamilton Way A new biography provides a glimpse into the life of the celebrated classicist. Mary Norris, October 12, 2023 review in The New Yorkermagazine.
In 2000 the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, erected statues of two Hamilton sisters, Edith and Alice, along with their cousin, Agnes, in the city's Headwaters Park. These are the Hamilton Women of Fort Wayne memorial in Headwaters Park is found at The Historical Marker Datatbase HMdb.org. Edith (seated), scholar of Greek and Roman mythology, wrote the classic text, The Greek Way. Alice, Edith's sister (standing) is Dr. Alice Hamilton who made history by being the first woman on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, influential industrial physician, advanced the reform of unsafe working conditions in our nation's factories. Agnes (with young child), their cousin, accomplished painter and child advocate, worked in settlement houses and founded Fort Wayne's YWCA. The Hamilton women have made lasting contributions to the well being of citizens on both local and national levels. Fort Wayne is proud of them.
The other Hamilton sister Three authors mine local sources to detail Alice's contributions to public health
the new book The Education of Alice Hamilton: From Fort Wayne to Harvard reviewed by Jo Young Switzer retired president of Manchester University published January 5, 2020 in The Journal Gazette newspaper.
