The Hamiltonians: 100 Fascinating Lives

Naomi Brun is a freelance writer and a book reviewer for The Hamilton
Spectator.

“The story of any city is the story of the people who have lived
there. The people who make a city exciting and unique are not
necessarily the famous or well-known inhabitants, but the ordinary,
everyday people who call that city home … [W]hat shapes the character
of a city more than anything else is serendipity. Who chanced to come
there and stay to shape its development is as variable as the wind.”

Margaret Houghton, the Special Collections Archivist at the Hamilton
Public Library, has collaborated with 22 other local historians to tell
the story of her own hometown. She presents a Hamilton dominated by
large personalities and characterized by conflict. Adelaide Hunter
Hoodless, for example, campaigned tirelessly for domestic education
after her son died from drinking spoiled milk. Her noble efforts
resulted in the creation of the Victorian Order of Nurses, the Hamilton
YWCA, and the international movement of Women’s Institutes. Richard
Lancefield, on the other hand, disappeared after running the Hamilton
Public Library for 13 years. Apparently, Lancefield had financed his
gambling addiction by writing duplicate cheques, leaving the library
with a debt load that equalled three years of his salary. The library
never recovered the full amount, and Lancefield never returned to
Hamilton alive. Social reformers, criminals, military heroes,
entrepreneurs, educators, and eccentrics have all made their home in
Hamilton and formed the city to their liking.

Perhaps that is what I found so fascinating about The Hamiltonians: the
book successfully portrays the development of a city at the hands of its
founders. The people whose lives fill its pages have lent not only their
names to the schools, streets, and parks of this city, but also their
passions, struggles, and values. In other words, they have created the
Hamilton that exists today.