Editing Edith Hamilton (section)

===Childhood and family===
[[File:Hamilton Sisters.jpg|thumb|The Hamilton sisters: Edith, Alice, Margaret and Norah]]
Edith Hamilton, the eldest child of American parents Gertrude Pond (1840–1917) and Montgomery Hamilton (1843–1909), was born on August 12, 1867, in [[Dresden]], [[Germany]]. Shortly after her birth, the Hamilton family returned to the United States and made their home in [[Fort Wayne, Indiana]], where Edith's grandfather, [[Allen Hamilton]], had settled in the early 1820s. Edith spent her youth among her extended family in Fort Wayne.<ref name=Weber40>{{cite journal| author=Catherine E. Forrest Weber | title =A Citizen of Athens: Fort Wayne's Edith Hamilton | journal =Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History | volume =14 | issue =1 | page =40 | publisher =Indiana Historical Society | location =Indianapolis | date =Winter 2002}}</ref><ref name=Jayes728>Janice Lee Jayes, "Hamilton, Edith (1867–1963)" in {{cite book | editor= Anne Commire | title =Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia | publisher =Yorkin Publications | series = Gale Virtual Reference Library | volume =6 | year =2002 | location =Detroit | page=728 | url = http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX2591303785&v=2.1&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=55d6fb3d9b04f3472e5f3dc167f8b9af |access-date=April 19, 2017}}</ref>

Edith's grandfather, Allen Hamilton, was an Irish immigrant who came to Indiana in 1823 by way of [[Canada]] and settled in Fort Wayne. In 1828 he married Emerine Holman, the daughter of [[Indiana Supreme Court]] Justice [[Jesse Lynch Holman]]. Allen Hamilton became a successful Fort Wayne businessman and a land speculator. Much of the city of Fort Wayne was built on land he once owned. The Hamilton family's large estate on a three-block area of downtown Fort Wayne included three homes.<ref>Edith's grandparents lived in the old homestead, called Old House; her uncle, Andrew Holman Hamilton, and his family lived in Red House; and Edith and her family lived in White House on the family compound. See Weber, p. 40.</ref><ref name="Sicherman">{{cite book|author=Barbara Sicherman|title=Alice Hamilton, A Life in Letters|year=1984|publisher=Harvard University Press|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|isbn=0-674-01553-3|pages=[https://archive.org/details/alicehamiltonlif00sich/page/13 13–15]|url=https://archive.org/details/alicehamiltonlif00sich/page/13}}</ref> The family also built a home at [[Mackinac Island, Michigan]], where they spent many of their summers. For the most part, the second and third generations of the extended Hamilton family, which included Edith's family, as well as her uncles, aunts, and cousins, lived on inherited wealth.<ref>Sicherman, ''Alice Hamilton, A Life in Letters'', pp. 14, 25.</ref>

Montgomery Hamilton, a scholarly man of leisure, was one of Allen and Emerine (Holman) Hamilton's eleven children; however, only five of the siblings lived. Her father attended [[Princeton University]] and [[Harvard Law School]] and also studied in [[Germany]]. Montgomery met Gertrude Pond, the daughter of a wealthy [[Wall Street]] broker and sugar importer, while living in Germany. They were married in 1866.<ref name=Weber40/><ref>Sicherman, ''Alice Hamilton, A Life in Letters'', pp. 15, 17.</ref> Montgomery Hamilton became a partner in a wholesale grocery business in Fort Wayne, but the partnership dissolved in 1885 and the business failure caused a financial loss for the family.<ref>Sicherman, ''Alice Hamilton, A Life in Letters'', p. 18.</ref> Afterwards, Montgomery Hamilton retreated from public life. Edith's mother, Gertrude, who loved modern literature and spoke several languages, remained socially active in the community and had "wide cultural and intellectual interests."<ref name=Weber40/> After her father's business failed, Edith realized that she would need to provide a livelihood for herself and decided to become an educator.<ref name=Jayes729>Jayes, p. 729.</ref>

Edith was the oldest of five siblings that included three sisters ([[Alice Hamilton|Alice]] (1869–1970), [[Margaret Hamilton (educator)|Margaret]] (1871–1969), and [[Norah Hamilton|Norah]] (1873–1945)) and a brother (Arthur "Quint" (1886–1967)), all of whom were accomplished in their respective fields. Edith became an educator and renowned author;  Alice became a founder of industrial medicine;<ref>Alice Hamilton became a resident of [[Chicago]]'s [[Hull House]], a settlement house that offered food, shelter, and educational classes as a charitable effort on the part of wealthy donors and scholars who volunteered their time. She later became a noted pioneer in industrial [[toxicology]], a professor of pathology Woman's Medical School of [[Northwestern University]], a special scientific investigator for the [[United States Department of Labor|U.S. Bureau of Labor]]. In 1919 Alice became the first woman professor (assistant professor of internal medicine) at [[Harvard Medical School]]. Later in life  she was a reformer, political activist, and consultant in the U.S. Division of Labor Standards. She also served as president of the [[National Consumers League]] and authored textbooks on industrial poisons and industrial toxicolory. See: {{cite book | author =Barbara Sicherman and Carol Hurd Green | title =Notable American Women: The Modern Period, A Biographical Dictionary | publisher =Belknap Press of Harvard University | year =1980 | location =Cambridge, Massachusetts | pages =[https://archive.org/details/notableamericanw00sich/page/303 303–06] | url =https://archive.org/details/notableamericanw00sich/page/303 | isbn =978-0-674-62732-1 }}</ref> Margaret, like her older sister, Edith, became an educator and headmistress at [[Bryn Mawr School]];<ref>In 1899 Margaret Hamilton studied [[biology]] in [[Munich]], Germany, and [[Paris, France]], with a close colleague and family friend, [[Clara Landsberg]], the daughter of a [[Reform Judaism|Reform rabbi]] from [[Rochester, New York]]. After graduating from [[Bryn Mawr College]], Landsberg also resided at Hull House, where she was in charge of its evening programs and shared a room with Alice Hamilton. Landsbert went on to teach Latin at Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, where Edith was headmistress. Margaret later taught at Bryn Mawr School and served as its headmistress before retiring in 1935. See: Sicherman, ''Alice Hamilton, A Life in Letters'', pp. 141, 257. Alice considered Landsberg part of the Hamilton family: "I could not think of a life in which Clara did not have a great part, she has become part of my life almost as if she were one of us." See Sicherman, ''Alice Hamilton, A Life in Letters'',  p. 197. See also: {{cite book | author=Sandra L. Singer| title =Adventures Abroad: North American Women at German-speaking Universities, 1868–1915 | publisher = Greenwood Publishing Group  | year =2003 | location =Westport, Connecticut | page =75| isbn =978-0-313-09686-0}}</ref> and Norah was an artist. Hamilton's youngest sibling, Arthur, was nineteen years her junior. He became a writer, professor of [[Spanish language|Spanish]], and assistant dean for foreign students at the [[University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign]]. Arthur was the only sibling to marry; he and his wife, Mary Neal (d. 1965), had no children.<ref name=Weber40/><ref>Sicherman, ''Alice Hamilton, A Life in Letters'', pp. 11–13.</ref>