“The Scandalous Hamiltons” with Bill Shaffer

The Preamble

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 August 2023

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sharon sits down with author and historical researcher, Bill Shaffer, to learn untold stories of a Hamilton descendant in his gripping book, “The Scandalous Hamiltons: A Gilded Age Grifter, a Founding Father's Disgraced Descendant, and a Trial at the Dawn of Tabloid Journalism. Today, if an author pitched a book proposal with as many twists and turns as this true story holds, it would likely be considered too far-fetched to be believable. Learn how curiosity from a fountain in Riverside park led to a deluge of court records, newspaper articles, and this turn-of-the-Century scandal.

Host/Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon

Guest: Bill Shaffer

Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello friends, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me today. Oh my goodness. Today's guest
0:11.3	is Bill Schaeffer and he has written a book called The Scandal of Hamilton's. And it is about
0:17.0	Hamilton Descendant and a scandal that you are not going to believe. It's one of those things
0:24.8	where it's just like, what? If this somebody wrote this as a movie proposal, everybody would be like,
0:31.9	that's not, no, that's not believable. We can't make that movie. So just buckle up, buckle up.
0:39.6	Let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon and here's where it gets interesting.
0:46.8	Well, I'm very excited to be chatting with Bill Schaeffer today. Thank you for being here.
0:50.7	Thank you. I saw your book on an upcoming release list and I was like, well, I will be reading
0:57.2	that. I'm glad. I'm glad. And I think the book is very, very aptly titled. It's called The Scandalist
1:07.4	Hamilton's. A Guilded Age Krifter of Founding Fathers disgraced descendant and a trial at the
1:15.6	dawn of tabloid journalism. And that definitely like, boy, that ticks a lot of boxes in my brain, Bill.
1:24.9	Let's start at the beginning. How did you become interested in this story? Because it is
1:32.4	very scandalous. Yeah, I live on the west side of Manhattan. And I about in 2017, I relocated to a new
1:42.3	building. And I was out for a walk in my sort of little three or four block area. And I got to
1:49.4	the end of 76th Street in Riverside Drive. And I saw this fountain. It's an old horse fountain.
1:57.0	And it stopped me and I thought this looks like something you would see at Grand Central Terminal.
2:02.7	And it was a very cold, cold January night. I quickly kind of ran over and scanned the park's
2:08.8	department plaque. And sure enough, it was designed by Warren and Letmore, who were the architects,
2:14.4	who designed Grand Central Terminal. They were very prominent architects at the beginning of
2:19.6	the 20th century. And as I'm hustling home to get out of the cold, I'm wondering why is Warren
2:25.8	and Letmore designing this little fountain in this sort of obscure corner of Riverside Park?
2:32.4	So I sort of cursory Google search about the Hamilton Fountain. And some articles came up about
	...

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