Hamilton, Mark

Born: 1819-01-29 Ireland

Died: 1879-XX-XX Nice, France

Flourished: 1848 to 1864 Saint Louis, Missouri

Mark Hamilton, grocer and wine merchant, may have emigrated from his native Ireland to Huntingdon County, Quebec, Canada along with his family, who settled there about 1833. Hamilton was living in St. Louis by 1848 when he was a partner with Samuel McCartney and Charles J. Butler in the forwarding and commission firm of McCartney, Butler & Company. He subsequently entered into a partnership with just McCartney, which was dissolved in 1851. Hamilton thereafter continued alone as a wholesale grocer and dealer of foreign wines and liquor in St. Louis until about 1864. Late in the 1850s Hamilton retained Lincoln & Herndon twice to recover debts owed him. He registered for the draft in St. Louis, but there is no further evidence that he actually served in the Civil War. At the time of the 1860 census, Hamilton owned real estate valued at $25,000 and possessed personal property worth $7o,000. Sometime before 1865 Hamilton became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He was living abroad at the time of his death, and as he died intestate with no family nearby, records conflict as to whether he died at the end of 1879 or the end of 1880. Hamilton was not known to have married or had children.

U.S., Passport Applications, 1795-1925 (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2007); Daily Missouri Republican (St. Louis), 6 March 1849, 4:9; 4 December 1851, 1:4; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Ward 4, St. Louis, St. Louis County, MO, 51; St. Louis Price-Current (MO), 16 May 1856, 1:6; For Lincoln’s cases involving Hamilton, search Participant, “Hamilton, Mark,” Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis, et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 6, St. Louis, St. Louis County, MO, 11; Daily Missouri Democrat (St. Louis), 21 February 1860, 4:4; U.S., Civil War Draft Registrations Records, 1863-1865 (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2010); Richard Edwards, ed., Edwards’ Annual Director to the Inhabitants, Institutions, Incorporated Companies, Manufacturing Establishments, Business, Business Firms, &c., in the City of St. Louis, for 1864 (St. Louis: Richard Edwards, [1864]), 714; New York, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1659-1999, 23 June 1884, Queens County (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2015).