About our Name
The Hamilton Fish Institute is named in memory of the late Hamilton Fish, a
New York Congressman who participated in the group that framed the underlying
ideas for and mission of the Institute.
Hamilton Fish came from a family with a long tradition of public service,
many of whom carried the name Hamilton Fish.
The Fish family has had a long and prominent role in New York politics. Nicholas Fish was born in
New York City
in 1758. During the American
Revolutionary War, he served as lieutenant colonel in the 2nd New
York Regiment. Afterwards, Fish served
in office as a New York
alderman from 1806 to 1817. Later, he
worked as the adjutant general for the state of New York.
Nicolas Fish fathered Hamilton Fish in New York in 1808. Nicolas named Hamilton after his friend, famous American
statesman, Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton
Fish graduated from Columbia College in 1827 and served as commissioner of deeds
for the city and county
of New York from 1832 to
1833. Later, he was elected into the
House of Representatives under the Whig party, serving from 1843 to 1845. In 1848, he was elected as governor of New York, where he
served until 1850. He became a United
States Senator in 1851, and served his six-year term on a moderate anti-slavery
platform. Fish was later appointed
Secretary of State under President Ulysses S. Grant in 1869, where he served
until 1877.
The next Hamilton Fish was born to the New York governor in 1849. He too graduated from Columbia
College, in 1869, and from Columbia Law School
in 1873. Later in that year he was
admitted to the bar. He served as
speaker of the New York
State assembly in 1895
and 1896, and was a member from 1874 through 1896. In 1903, he was appointed as assistant
treasurer of the United States
at New York City
under President Theodore Roosevelt. He
was reappointed in 1907 and resigned in 1908.
The next year, he was elected to Congress under the Republican Party
where he served for two years.
The New York State assembly member gave birth to the
third Hamilton Fish in 1888. He became a
Harvard graduate in 1910, and was elected into the New York State
assembly in 1914 where he served for two years.
In 1917, Fish was commissioned captain of Company K, Fifteenth New York
National Guard, and achieved the rank of major before being discharged in
1919. He was elected as a Republican
into the Unites States Congress in 1919, and served there until 1945.
Hamilton Fish Jr. was born in Washington,
D.C. in 1926. In 1944, Fish entered the United States Naval
Reserve where he served for two years.
He graduated from Harvard
College in 1949, and
later New York University School of Law in 1957. He became a United States Congressman (R) in
1969 and maintained his position, through re-elections, until 1995. Hamilton Fish Jr. died in Washington
on July 23, 1996, and was interred in Garrison,
N.Y.
Sources:
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
