Museum’s collection of Hamilton Burr letters to be published

Front elevation of the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York (Photo By Ser Amantio di Nicolao – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0)

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y.— A New York museum’s collection of correspondence between Founding Father Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr will be published next year in a book.

The Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown says $50,000 of the $70,000 in grants it has received from the Long Island-based Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation will cover the cost of publishing the 35 letters the political rivals wrote before Burr killed Hamilton in an 1804 duel.

The other ,000 grant will go toward developing programming and digital content related to the letters.

Philanthropist Steven Clark bought the letters for the museum in the 1950s.

It will be the first time the rarely published letters are transcribed alongside a pictorial image of the originals in print.

Douglas Ambrose, a Hamilton scholar and professor at Hamilton College in central New York, will write the book.