Croix as a teenager (Brookhiser 15). In about 1745, Rachel married a planter, John Lavien, and a year later she bore him a son. John Lavien and Rachel settled on a cotton plantation that John owned. In 1750 he had her jailed for refusing to live with him (Brookhiser 15). When she got out, she returned to the British West Indies, where she met James Hamilton (Brookhiser 15). .
Alexander admitted that his birth was "not free from blemish-(Brookhiser 15). His mother, Rachel, had two sons with James Hamilton, James Junior and Alexander, without getting a divorce from John Lavien (Brookhiser 15). Rachel and James tried to avoid the great stigma of illegitimacy (Brookhiser 15). Alexander was led to believe that his mother had gotten a second marriage and records from the Dutch island of St. Eustatius mentioned the presence of James Hamilton and "Rachel Hamilton his wife- (Brookhiser 15). However, in the Danish Virgin Islands, Rachel was still Rachel Lavien. In 1759, John Lavien divorced Rachel for her "ungodly mode of life- (Brookhiser 16). Rachel was not aloud to remarry, mainly because she was the party at fault. Presumably, James Senior discovered this state of affairs when he moved with his family to St. Croix in 1765. A year later, he left them, never to return (Brookhiser 16). "These early experiences helped shape critical facets of Hamilton's later thinking- (Finseth 1). .
Alexander and his older brother, James, had an apparently normal family life. But in 1765 their father decided to go his own way, leaving Rachel Lavien and her two illegitimate sons to fend for themselves (Hamilton 15). Circumstances forced Rachel to apprentice her son, Alexander, to Beekman and Cruger, a commercial firm that hired him as a clerk (Hecht 6). Rachel ended up proving her husband wrong, and for three years she operated a prosperous store on the Danish island of St. Croix (Hamilton 15). Before, and maybe after, Alexander started to work, he helped his mother in the store, thereby obtaining some idea of business (Hecht 6).
