The Wonderful Hamilton Family

The 2016 Hamilton Family Reunion was great fun.

Read all about it on the 2016 Reunion in Elmo page

Meet George W. Hamilton and Family

 George W. Hamilton

He is the father of 16 children.

Family of George and Mary Hamilton.

 George Hamilton, Mary Elizabeth, James Alexander, Charles Victor, Kate and Joseph Hamilton. The picture below was taken on Mary Elizabeth's wedding day 1894. 

Mary Hull Hamilton passed away in 1878.

In 1883 George was introduced to Flora Ada Clark by his brother Benjamin's daughter, Ida Hamilton Towbridge.  George and Flora were married June 28, 1883 in Newton, Sussex, New Jersey.  George was visiting his family in New Jersey but lived in Nodaway County Missouri.

Flora Ada Clark Hamilton wrote on the back of this picture...."Taken on the day I was married." 

Flora Ada Clark Hamilton

by Aloha Thompson

Flora Ada Clark was born March 28, 1856 to James Clark and Lydia Baldwin Clark, in Newark, New Jersey.  She was the first of four girls who survived.  There was a total of twelve children born to James and Lydia.  Flora Ada, Lydia (Aunt Liddy), Iola (Aunt Iola) and Margaretta (Aunt Gretta) were the survivors.

The girls were brought up in an almost cloistered atmosphere. The household was not a lighthearted place.  Church was an important part of their lives.  Suitors were not encouraged, apparently, and two of the sisters, on growing up, went into the city of New York to work.  Commuting, I think from New Jersey.  Lydia stayed home and took care of her mother and the house.

It seems that Flora did not go that route, rather she did housework for others.  She had friends, among them was Ida Hamilton.  Ida's family was outgoing and full of fun.  Flora loved being with them.  She had decided that she didn't want to be an old maid. Flora was strong minded young lady.

When Ida's family learned that widowed Uncle George Hamilton was to make a visit from Missouri, they planned a meeting for Flora and George.  It was a 3 week courtship.  Flora had decided that if he was related to Ida and her family, he must be a good person.  When he proposed marriage, she accepted, though it meant leaving all she had known, and moving to a farm in Missouri.

After the wedding, accompanied by George's sister Caroline Hamilton (Aunt Care), and the three children George had brought with him, (Kate, Molly and maybe Vic), Flora and George set out for Missouri.  They arrived on the 4th of July, 1883, a soggy, rainy, miserable day.  Flora stepped off the train into a different world.  Actually, into a sea of mud.  There were no boardwalks, no cobbled or paved streets.  Not much in the way of a town.  A lesser person might have been tempted to catch the next train east.

Life with George wasn't boring.  There were 5 children from his first family living in the little house where he took Flora.  Not that they stayed there long.  Some would marry shortly, and Kate took little Molly to live with her after her marriage.  Flora's life was one long odyssey, during which she bore nine children in various areas of the country.  George moved her with great regularity.  Daughter Flora said her mother didn't mind as long as she could take her things with her. 

According to Flora, there were 25 moves in 46 years.  Six of those were back to the farm where Art Hamilton lived.  She lived with daughter Flora in the house on Van Lennen in Cheyenne in the last yeas of her life.  Her sister Liddy lived with them until her death in 1939.  Flora Ada Clark Hamilton died in her own bed, at 1922 Van Lennen, Cheyenne, Wyoming on September 6, 1936.  Her daughter, Flora Ada Hamilton would die in the same bed in the same room forty three years later in 1979.

Daughters Iola, Georgia, Athalia and Edith lived in Cheyenne from the early 1920's rearing their families there.  Flora had 37 grandchildren, some of whom died as small children.  How her grandchildren remember her differ broadly.  From Edd Bailey, the oldest to Phillip Colwell, the youngest each has a unique picture of this little lady in his or her head.  June Thompson Hansen has little memory of her grandmother but lots of memories learned at the knees of mother and aunts. Flora was a strongly principled, strong minded woman.  Through small in stature, she was a powerhouse for her family.  Her daughters in their later years continued to say, "My Mother always said......" and we learned from that.

The Hamilton Family at the Elrod house in Elmo, Missouri about 1905 

George,Art, Georgia, Flora holding Edith, Athalia, Flora, Frank and Ed

 Iola, Fowler, Georgia, Frank, Flora, Flora, Ed, Athalia, Art and Edith

Taken in 1928 at 600 East 17th St - Cheyenne, Wyoming