John Parke Custis - Tumblr Posts
king's college, hamilton & custis: two very different 1773 students
Jacky Custis (Washington's stepson) enrolled at King's College in May 1773, but "dropped out" in less than a year. Crazy how small colonial America was, because guess who else began attending King's College in 1773 before being formally matriculated in 1774? Alexander Hamilton. Who, like George Washington who originally wanted to send Jacky to Princeton, had applied first to Princeton but gone to King's College after being rejected.
You can really see their contrasting motivation because Hamilton was devouring all these books and whatnot as per usual, and Jacky was out here sending letters to his mother going "the teachers look upon me in a particular light aka they suck up to me a lot"; Myles Cooper the president of King's College writing to Washington in the best light possible at first, saying that Jacky "dines with the Professors and myself in the College-hall...I doubt not will make a Proficiency equal to the warmest Wishes and Expectations" in July. But they gave up the ghost and Washington wrote in December that Jacky wouldn't be returning to King's College. Very passive aggressive: "I have yielded, contrary to my judgment, & much against my wishes, to his quitting College." (Myles Cooper is also the Loyalist that Hamilton tried to help by talking down the Patriot mob long enough for him to escape.)
From the notes in Cooper's September letter to Washington, it appears that Jacky left King's College late September and arrived (?) at Mt. Vernon on October 2nd, never to return. Washington assumed this was just a mini vacation but it wasn't. Knowing this and that Hamilton most likely started studying in fall of 1773, there's a very slim chance that Custis and he crossed paths at least once.
Someone write that fanfic for me. Hamilton remembering a lackadaisical, pompous student he met at King's College, joking and sharing the story with the military family - Washington realizing who he's talking about, but not saying anything much until Hamilton realizes in horror that the "John or whoever that ate with the professors and never picked up a book and went on and on about his girl Nelly" is General Washington's son Jacky.
This is me still fixating about the southern Hamilton au, but it tickles my fancy to think that both Washington's actual son and his rumored illegitimate son attended the same college in the same year, though with wildly different results. More realistically, even if Hamilton never met Jacky, it still must've been an awkward conversation with the general, if it ever got brought up. "I studied at King's College, sir." "Oh really? My son attended King's College in 1773." "Oh! I started studying there in 1773 too, maybe I met him!" "Probably not since he dropped out in a few months." "Oh."