News Flash

Aug. 29, 2016 - Dr. Phillip Hamilton, author of The Making and Unmaking of a Revolutionary Family: the Tuckers of Virginia, 1752-1830 will speak on Monday, September 12, 7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. as part of the Hampton History Museum’s Port Hampton Lecture Series.

By the early 1800s, the once-sumptuous world of the Virginia gentry was vanishing, its kinship ties crumbling along with its mansions, crushed by democratic leveling at home and a strong federal government in Washington, D.C. Drawing upon an extraordinary archive of private letters, journals, and other manuscript materials, Dr. Phillip Hamilton illustrates how two generations of a colorful and influential Virginia family adapted to the social upheaval occurring in the wake of the American Revolution.

Dr. Hamilton finds that the Tuckers eventually rejected wider family connections and turned instead to nuclear kin. The Tuckers also abandoned the liberal principles and enlightened rationalism of the Revolution for a romanticism girded by deep social conservatism. In The Making and Unmaking of a Revolutionary Family Professor Hamilton reveals the complex process by which the world of Washington and Jefferson evolved into the antebellum, pro-slavery society of Edmund Ruffin and Thomas Dew.

Phillip Hamilton is Professor of History at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia. He received his BA from Gettysburg College, MA in history from George Washington University, and Ph.D. in history from Washington University in St. Louis. A historian specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America, Hamilton has taught at Christopher Newport University from 2002 to the present. He is the author of two books, The Making and Unmaking of a Revolutionary Family: the Tuckers of Virginia, 1752-1830, published by University of Virginia Press in 2003 (paperback edition, 2008), and Serving the Old Dominion: A History of Christopher Newport University, published by Mercer University Press in 2011. He has also published numerous articles on early American history in such journals as The William & Mary Quarterly and Virginia Magazine of History & Biography. He is currently writing a joint-biography of the Revolutionary War general, Henry Knox, and his wife, Lucy Flucker Knox as well as editing a volume of their wartime correspondence.

This program is free to Hampton History Museum members, and $5.00 for non-members. The Hampton History Museum is located at 120 Old Hampton Lane in downtown Hampton. There is free parking in the garage across the street. For more information, dial 757/727-1610.