Young Alexander Hamilton
The Great Hurricane
A Parallel in Time. The unprecedented two Category 5 Hurricane Irma and Maria that ravage the USVI and the Caribbean in September 2017.
In August 1772, a hurricane ravaged the West Indies—and a young Alexander Hamilton picked up a pen to write about it. The resulting letter would inspire the residents of the island where Hamilton lived to pool their money for a scholarship to send him to the future United States of America … and into the history books.
For the several hundred years before hurricanes in North American waters were named after women and then men as well, they were often labeled by the name of the saint’s day on which they fell or just called, monotonously, “The Great Hurricane” of a specified year.
There was “Hurricane Santa Ana” in 1825 for example, “San Felipe” the first and “San Felipe” the second in 1876 and 1928. And there was “The Hurricane of 1768” that destroyed some 4,000 houses in Havana and killed a thousand people.
But Hurricane Maria, which was closing in on the islands of the Caribbean Tuesday morning, inevitably brings to mind a storm which has acquired a truly unique nickname: “The Alexander Hamilton Hurricane of
1772,” as Bahamian meteorologist and historian Wayne Neely called it in his book “The Greatest and Deadliest Hurricanes of the Caribbean and the Americas.”
It barreled through the Leeward Islands of St. Thomas, Puerto Rico and St. Croix on Aug. 31, 1772, described in a local paper as “the most dreadful Hurricane known in the memory of man … the whole frame of nature seemed unhinged and tottering to its fall … terrifying even the just, for who could stand undisturbed amid the ruins of a falling world …” (Washington Post)
A Coincidental Opportunity
"How ironic is it the US Treasury creates the Opportunity Zone Initiative and St. Croix being the Boyhood home of Alexander Hamilton and where he is from, an American Founding Father and the First US Treasury Secretary! The most celebrated founding father responsible for creating modern America!" - Anthony Weeks, SEDI Managing Director
Alexander Hamilton Opportunity Fund
