The Eva Hamilton Scandal — Part One

In the late summer of 1889, a scandal rocked New York society. Details were contradictory, but the eventual gist was that New York State Assemblyman Robert Ray Hamilton (great-grandson of Alexander Hamilton) had been seeing Miss Eva Steele — aka Eva Parsons, aka Eva Brill, aka Eva Mann — for two years when, in 1888, she told him she was expecting. After months in seclusion, she introduced him to his daughter, and Hamilton did…