The Mystery of Frank Hamilton

Update 2-24-2017

Could Frank Hamilton and Gilbert Hamilton be the same person?

Links: Grave Info, Travel Time from England to America in 1899,  Basic Profile, Companion of Bath Link –Military Service, 14^th Hussars, Military Promotion Dates, Gilbert Hamilton Biography, Ghazi Hamilton, Half-Pay in British Army, Genealogy

“when this body is buried now that secret is safe forever” – Frank Hamilton on his death bed.

Finding Truth in the Lies…

Although a significant part of this story, the mystery of Frank Hamilton, is not the primary focus of the book, “Trials of the Earth.” Mary Mann Hamilton was as sturdy and strong as Frank was mysterious and unreliable. This project is designed to dig into the facts that can be now easily traced through genealogy research. We are hopeful that there are more truths than lies in the words spoken by Frank Hamilton. It is important to remember that the book is a memoir based on Mary Mann Hamilton’s memory of the past. As with any other genealogy narrative, we take her story as clues to lead us to the real facts.

As the reader: Please feel free to contribute to this article in the comments. If you have special insight or facts, attempts will be made to incorporate those into this page with credit.

OPINIONS

The relationship and dynamic between Frank and his wife, Mary is an important part of this story. Mary believes from the beginning that Frank is better than she is. This relationship is the key to understanding the motivations behind Mary and Frank. At some point, Mary resolves to believe in Frank, despite the fact that she is not given the whole truth. Mary decides that she does not need an explanation to live the rest of her life. It is almost as if she imagined her life without a husband and decided that having part of him was better than none of him. One thing that Mary does not say outright in the book, but is plain from her stories is that Frank could disappear for long periods. During these times, Mary was unable to know where he was or have a way to write him letters to communicate with him. If a tragedy occurred while he was gone, she had no way to call him back home to help. She had to deal with these things on her own. Mary never wrote that she perceived these periods without Frank as an abandonment, which I believe she had every right to believe. Mary rarely enjoyed her time with relatives, and although she never wrote this, I believe she must have felt like a burden to her relatives, and she was always hopeful and relieved when Frank returned. Mary does mention briefly that her brother is irritated with Frank’s absence. For her entire life, Mary overcompensates by working tirelessly. She had incredible endurance and energy that few could help but admire. – Kelly E Lee, 1-26-2017

Book Reviews:

Review by Maureen Corrigan, August 15, 2016. NPR.

Review by C.J. Lotz, July 22, 2016. Garden & Gun

Review by Rosellen Brown, Dec 13, 1992. New York Times

BOOK FACTS

-This section consists of all book facts that pertain to Frank’s previous identity.

1. Frank admits he is hiding – running from something.
2. Frank lists his birthday as Nov 16, 1852.
3. Frank says that he was working at the mill as an assistant superintendent and a side job as a bookkeeper. (pg.6)
4. While courting Mary, he told her he was tired of ‘boarding around.’ (pg. 8)
5. “I knew I pleased him, but he never praised me in one thing, and he gave me to understand that he picked our friends. When a gossipy man or woman came to see us, he would be so cool they never came again. Then he would say to me, ‘It is better to treat them so. They are just trying to pry into my business and the company’s.’ (pg9-10)
6. “I didn’t even know what salary he was getting for a year after we were married.” (pg. 10)
7. “Business often kept him out late, but I had thought nothing of it.” (pg. 10)
8. “Naturally I was curious, and tried to quiz Frank about it, but all he told me was that he went to a military school in England for four years before going to India in the English army” (pg.15) after pretending not to see two gentlemen salute him at their boardinghouse.
9. Frank said, “I have never done anything dishonest nor dirty in my life, but my past before I came to the United States concerns no one. When I landed in New York, I closed that life forever. “If you heard that, then you know already how I feel about it. Can you forget it? You married Frank Hamilton, and there is no law in England or America to change that. My past concerns no one.” (pg.17)
10. “He [Frank] said the doctors told him he must leave the country and go to a drier climate, but when I asked him if he was going, he said, no. I have traveled as long as I had any money. From Canada, where I had my first bad spell, straight to old Mexico, and I am as well here as anyplace. Mr. Gray and I are partners from now on, running the boardinghouses that are going to have to be built further out in the woods, and hauling ties and having them made. “ (pg. 19-20)
11. “Frank, how many languages can you speak, and where did you learn them?’ Frank turned it off saying only, ‘Five, or six. Some I learned at school, but most of them in the army in Bengal, where a man is liable to learn anything.’” (pg. 21)
12. Frank is reading the newspaper “Go ahead, spend, spend. Spend all the money you have looking for me. Damn the lot of you. I am dead, dead to all of you.”
13. [Approximately 1 1/12 months before her baby was born, she caught Frank reading the newspaper, referenced in BF12.] “It kept me busy sewing up to the twenty-fifth of July, when my first baby, a fine eight-pound boy, was born.] [“My dear, you have nothing to do with it. His name is Jim Hamilton…I mean Sir Jim Hamilton, the greatest friend I ever had, madam.” (pg. 25)
14. “He would tell us stories of his war days in India or cowboy stories of Texas and old Mexico. When he first came to this country, he got lead poisoning in Nebraska lead mines and took down there with rheumatism. He got to Canada before he had to go to a hospital. As soon as he could travel he went straight to old Mexico” (pg. 27)
15. Frank sends Mary to her brother Sam’s home for over a month. (pg.29) At first Frank and Mary exchange letters, but Frank tells her he has sold all their belongings, Mary cannot send him letters because he is ‘traveling.’
16. 1887 – Frank and Mary reunited for a few months and then he sent her to live with her sister Lucy in Black Rock, Arkansas. Mary is pregnant now and Frank promises to come for her before the baby is born. She becomes ill on the train ride back and has her baby a month early. Again, since Frank was traveling she had no way to contact him. Two days after the baby dies, she gets a telegram that Frank has been in a wagon accident in Kansas City. Mary sells her belongings to pay for her doctor bills and the baby’s funeral and burial. (pg. 36-37)
17. 1888 – Mary moved from her sister Lucy’s house to work as a cook and board with a family. She was there from April until December 28^th. She did not see Frank this entire time. She finally quit the job in February, while Frank was off looking? for a new job, or working? at a new job.
18. Mary wonders if ‘Hamilton’ is Frank’s real name. (pg.42)
19. Charlie Flynn and Lucy get the news that Frank has been killed. They try to tell Mary when Frank walks in. He was just badly injured in an explosion. (pg.44)
20. Frank tells Mary that after the explosion, he is not going back to that job and begins to look for new work. (pg.47)
21. An old man asks Frank how long he was in this country before he learned to speak the language. Frank replied, “I have been here, sir, ten years, and can’t speak it yet.” “So the sweetest happiest year of my whole life began to come to a close, and on a still, beautiful fall day in October, my little Nina was born.” (pg. 51) 1893, Frank estimates he has been in the US for ten years, meaning his immigration would have been in about 1883.
22. In 1895? Frank leaves again to find work. He sends for them after a year of working near Gunnison, Mississippi with Jim Thompson. Therefore, Frank does not see his family for an entire year. (pg. 59-60) “He hadn’t seen her [Baby Leslie] since she was a few weeks old” (pg.63) So Frank is not with his family for almost the entirety of 1895.
23. According to Mary, Frank ‘played favorite’ to his daughter, Nina. “I told him it was wrong to make so much difference in the children. He said, ‘I can’t help it, Mary. If you had ever seen my mother or sister, you would understand. I don’t think many boys ever loved a mother as I loved mine, and my sister. Nina has my mother’s face and ways. If I ever try to win back what I have lost, it will be easy through her. She could be identified as one of that old family by her hair alone. For six hundred years, Mary, that gold, bright, curly hair has been in my family. It never changes coloring from birth to old age. My mother’s hair was that color when she died. And those dark gray eyes, almost black, with that peculiar sweet look out of them.” Then later, “You ask me Mary, why I don’t make friends. I have gone through hell because of another’s treachery. I have no friend in this world and want none but you and my children.” (pg. 126-127)
24. “Long ago he had been hurt in England in a steeplechase, the time he got his knee hurt, both legs broken, and his skull fractured.” (pg. 232)
25. “Frank said we would call him Bob, as he was too small to carry anything more, but if he lived and got strong, we would call him John Robert Hamilton. It was the first time he had ever given a double name to any of our children.” “But I have wondered since if his giving Bob a double name wasn’t because at last he had given up all hope of returning to whatever it was that waited for him in England.” (pg.247)
26. “My children are as good as any in America if blood counts and it does. Money doesn’t count, Leslie. You children have blood in your veins that many an American has traded name and fortune for. Hold up your head, child. You don’t have to stoop to anyone.” (pg. 255)
27. ‘To explain it all now would only make the children discontented because they couldn’t claim their right to something they can’t prove when I am gone. It would take money and influence, and you won’t have either. If I had go to take that trip home instead of the one that I am about to take. I wonder if it is a judgment sent on me, Mary. God help me. It is too late.” (pg. 296)
28. (Pg. 298) paragraph two.
29. (pg.299) “Just as the train was slowing up for Memphis they began singing ‘Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide,’ his old Church of England song.
30. He got so he talked more freely of his nine years in India in the army, of his life in the barracks at the foot of the Himalaya Mountains, the wild boar hunting, the soldiers horseback with their carbines; of the green parrots, the magpies, the jackdaws and their pranks, the peacocks that were considered a sacred birth there, and (what the children like best of all) tales of the thousands of little white-collared monkeys that were thicker there, he said than squirrels were here. (pg. 282)
31. Frank had Bright’s disease. (pg. 287)
32. “I have written that mama was born in Illinois and her father and mother as well; that her parents on both sides were Scotch and Dutch. Father never had any ancestors, not even a father or a mother. He just came up overnight like a mushroom. He thinks that happened in England, as his passport to America was made out in England.” Frank responds. “I think you are just plain lying, or that teacher is fishing for information, and I won’t answer. But I have been thinking lately a good deal. If we don’t have any more bad luck and can keep putting by some more money, by March I would like to go back to England. You children are getting large enough to go ahead now for a while. I would be gone about four months. Then when I got back I could bring you all the proof to show you, you have a right to be proud of your father’s blood.” (pg. 287-288)
33. He talked to us more that night than he ever had before – of his home, his church, his old school days; of a bell in his school that had one boy’s name carved in it in one direct line of his family for over six hundred years. ‘So when your teacher asks you if your father was an infidel, you’ll know what to tell him. I can think of no greater joy than to know all your names would be entered in the same book.’ (pg. 288)
34. Frank considers joining the Baptist church before he dies, but then says, ‘No, I belong to the Church of England. Once a member of the church, always a member.’ (pg. 302)
35. If Frankie had got here, I had determined to tell all, but what I could tell would benefit none of our children but Frankie. Our property in England is entailed and would go to the oldest boy. I am the youngest of four boys; everything is in my oldest brother Robert’s name. We are an old family, with a good old name, but no longer rich, and there are too many between the property and me. Bob’s wife never had any children. My second brother was an old bachelor, my third was in Australia. He and I had some money left to us by my mother. It was invested in Australia, but Bob claimed I ran through my part in the military school and the army. We had some trouble when I came to America, nothing dishonest on either part, but I left, angry at them all, and swore I was dead to them all. Yes, dead, buried long ago, and I can do no good to anyone by opening that grave; when this body is buried now that secret is safe forever. I cheated them, didn’t I, Mary? Dead to them all and living thirty happy years of married life with you. I will be the first in my family to be laid outside the family vault. I will be glad to rest in America, near my American children. What do you say, Mary? May I go in peace? (pg. 303-304)
36. “As long as Bob lives, you have me with you. Even after I am gone, if they ever send anyone from home trying to trace me, they will know they are on the right track if they run across Bob. But the family likeness runs through all my children. (pg. 304)
37. In his delirium, he talked in Hindustani, except for once, “Yes, Mother, I can see you up there at the top of those glorious old Himalaya Mountains in the sky.”

SUPPOSITIONS (UNCERTAIN BELIEFS)

1. Based on BF37 (Book Fact 37). Frank H. was born and/or raised in India, and learned to speak Hindustani as his first language, but came from an English family. According to the last fact, it may be assumed likely that Frank’s mother also lived in India and loved the Himalayan Mountains. Also, does it mean something significant that while speaking to his mother, he would speak in English?
2. Based on BF35, Frank H. was told by his brother that he had squandered his inheritance during his time in the military.
3. Based on BF35, Frank says that his second brother was an old Bachelor. However, unless his brother was much older, Frank would not have known that his brother would become an ‘old bachelor’ unless he followed or had contact with the family in England.
4. Frank and Mary were virtually homeless for the majority of their married life.

GENEALOGY RESEARCH FACTS

   (thus referred to as GRF_, i.e.: GRF6)

1. FindaGrave: Frank Hamilton and Mary Mann Hamilton
2. Marriage Record for Frank and Mary Mann.
3. Possible immigration record for Frank Hamilton.
4. Possible immigration or return trip from England to New York for Frank Hamilton.

HYPOTHESIS

1. Frank came from a prominent English family but was further removed from the straight lineage of an heir (or family member with a title).
2. Frank was possibly a bigamist (sorry to offend anyone!), but this wasn’t an unknown occurrence in the late 19^th century in America. It would explain Frank’s long absences and inability to be contacted. Based on BF15, BF16, BF17, and BF22. [However, in the end, it still doesn’t explain the mystery of where Frank came from, so I don’t think this is an important idea on which to focus.]
3. Frank Hamilton tried to fake his own death to keep unknown persons from finding him. Based on BF12, BF19, and BF35.

RESEARCH IDEAS

1. Find a marriage in England that unites John Hamilton and Anna Morton, circa 1822-1852. Possibly near London.
2. Find a marriage in India that unites John Hamilton and Anna Morton, circa 1822-1852. Possibly near an area south of the Himalayan Mountains.
3. Look for military service in India or census for Frank Hamilton, b. 1852.
4. Find a prominent person in London, England who was named John Hamilton and had a son, Robert, who would have been his first-born and heir. John Hamilton and Anna Morton had at least four sons and one daughter.
5. Find the news story about the explosion that Frank was in while they were living with Mary’s sister Lucy and brother-in-law, Charlie Flynn. Concentrating on Mary’s children and their ages are a great way to narrow down the year.
6. Based on BF13, James Hamilton: July 20, 1886-November 2, 1886 born & died in Sedgwick, Lawrence County, Arkansas [Approximately 1 1/12 months before her due date, she caught Frank reading the newspaper. What newspaper would he have been reading in Lawrence County, Arkansas? “It kept me busy sewing up to the twenty-fifth of July, when my first baby, a fine eight-pound boy, was born.] [“My dear, you have nothing to do with it. His name is Jim Hamilton…I mean Sir Jim Hamilton, the greatest friend I ever had, madam.” (pg. 25)
7. Search for documentation on the murder trial in Mississippi, a charge for which Frank was later exonerated.

Excited to be on this journey with you!