Author: Hamlin, Amos
Biography:
HAMLIN, Amos (1766-1843: ancestry.com)
Only one publication is recorded. In the Preface, he describes himself as having been a poor orphan who was educated in a country village. At the time of publication he was living in Montgomery County NY, not far from Albany where his rationalist, anti-clerical work was published. A man of the same name living in Albany in 1831 received a government pension as a veteran of the Revolutionary War. If he was the Amos Hamlin, son of Cornelius and Hannah Hamlin, who was born in Sharon CT in 1766 and who enlisted at the age of 15, he may have served only 1781-83. He then trained as a physician and for a time was in charge of a hospital in Brooklyn NY before settling with his young family in Durham, Greene County NY, which is about 50 miles from Albany. With Hulda Mudge, whom he married about 1790, he had seven children, three of whom died in infancy. With his second wife, whose name is not known but whom he married about 1805, he had five more children. He was a surgeon in the state militia 1808-14, joined the county’s medical society in 1808 and was its president 1823-5. He was also active in the county’s agricultural society. It was perhaps on its behalf that he wrote to the President, Thomas Jefferson, in 1818, sending a copy of some of his observations on weather and enquiring about comparable data for Virginia. He ran unsuccessfully for the House of Representatives in 1824. He died in Durham in April 1843. (ancestry.com 21 Feb. 2019, 30 Mar. 2025; findmypast.com 30 Mar. 2025; “Amos Hamlin to Thomas Jefferson, 12 January 1818,” founders.archives.gov 30 Mar. 2025) HJ