[3] Maria had one child with Reynolds, a daughter named Susan, born August 18, 1785, later baptized in October.
It was there in summer 1791 that 23-year-old Maria visited 34-year-old Hamilton at his Philadelphia residence and asked for help, claiming her abusive husband had abandoned her.
Once Hamilton arrived at the boarding house where Maria was lodging, she brought him upstairs and led him into her bedroom, where he recounts that "Some conversation ensued from which it was quickly apparent that other than pecuniary consolation would be acceptable”.
After Hamilton had shown unequivocal signs that he wanted to end the affair[4] on December 15, 1791, Maria sent him a letter warning of Reynolds's anger over the supposed discovery of the affair:I have not the time to tell you the cause of my present troubles; only that Mr. Reynolds has wrote you this morning and I know not whether you have got the letter or not and he has swore that if you do not answer, or if he does not see or hear from you today, he will write to Mrs. Hamilton.
[11] In November 1792, James Reynolds, after illegally purchasing Revolutionary War soldiers' pensions and back-pay claims, was imprisoned for forgery with Virginian Jacob Clingman, his partner in crime.
James Monroe, Frederick Muhlenberg, and Abraham Venable visited Reynolds in jail, where Reynolds hinted at some unspecified public misconduct on Hamilton's part whose details he promised to expose after coming out of prison, only to disappear immediately after his release on December 12, 1792.
On December 15, 1792, Monroe, Venable, and Muhlenberg went to Hamilton with the evidence they had gathered and confronted him on the possible charge of speculation.
Fearful of what a scandal could do to his career, Hamilton admitted to the affair with Maria, proved with the letters from both Maria and James Reynolds that his payments to Reynolds related to the blackmail over his adultery, and not to treasury misconduct and asked them to keep the information private as he was innocent of any public wrongdoing.
Clingman, on January 1, 1793, declared to Monroe that Maria claimed that the affair had been invented as a cover for the speculation scheme.
[17] Before obtaining the divorce[18] she had gone to live with Virginian Jacob Clingman — whom she later married in 1795 - who had also been a partner in crime in Reynolds' speculations.
[19] In summer 1797, journalist James T. Callender published a collection of pamphlets entitled The History of the United States for 1796, in which he promised to uncover public wrongdoing on Hamilton's part.
[citation needed] A merchant by the name of Peter Grotjan in 1842 reported that he had met Maria many years earlier.
[21] In 1800, her daughter Susan was sent to a Boston boarding school with the help of Congressman William Eustis, who had been petitioned by Aaron Burr to help the girl.