For a century and a quarter Hamilton's '400' has been aware of the connection between the British royal family and the household of Barton Lodge, formerly situated on the Mountain brow west of the present Ontario Hospital site.

Yet in Tory and royalist Hamilton no printed world concerning this appeared. Nevertheless the tradition is strong.

The exact date when Isabella Hyde married John Lionel Whyte in a union believed predetermined by the Duke of Kent is not known. It is known, however, that their only child, Emily Esther Elizabeth, the future Mrs. Gourlay, was born in 1818, one year before the infant Victoria, her presumed half-aunt to whom she bore a remarkable likeness.

How the latter birth came about is a story too well known to require retelling here--the death in child-birth of Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prince Regent and heir presumptive to the British throne, and the separation of the Duke of Kent and Julie to permit the marriage for dynastic reasons of the Duke to Victoria Maria Louisa, daughter of the Duke of Saxe--Saalfeld--Coburg.

On May 24, 1819, the desired heir to the British throne was born in Kensington Palace--the infant Alexandrina Victoria, the future Queen Victoria, greatest of British monarchs.

Eight months later her father, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, died of pleurisy at the age of 52.

Systematically the widowed Duchess of Kent and later her daughter, Queen Victoria, set about destroying every evidence that linked husband and father with the charming Julie. So successful were they that it is unlikely the story will ever be authentically assembled.

Maria Louisa could have forgiven the Duke of Kent a number of impermanent affairs. Far more wounding to her self esteem was her husband's lifelong and contented attachment to one woman.

Anxious to save Victoria embarrassment, the sweet tempered Julie dispatched to the court through a friend her correspondence with the Duke. After the letters reached Victoria's hands they were never seen again.

Similarly, when Colonel de Salaberry in Quebec arranged, annotated and forwarded to London for publication the voluminous correspondence of the Duke and de Salaberry he was later informed that the file had been completely destroyed in a fire.

Family histories of descendants abound too in tales of vanished documents, some even seized by force.

When one also considers that throughout Victoria's reign biographers and historians found it expedient to omit all mention of Julie from their works, the difficulty of tracing and proving descent becomes apparent.

In the case of Hamilton's Isabella Hyde and her descendents some questions will probably never be answered.

Why did James Whyte, of Newmains, who belonged to the old and distinguished Houson-Craufurd family, and his sons, including James Matthew and John Lionel--husband of Isabella--reportedly change their name to Whyte upon receipt of estates in Jamaica?

According to the inscription on his tombstone still standing north of St. Paul's Presbyterian Church on James Street South, James Matthew Whyte, Esq. was "formerly Captain in the 1^st (or the King's) Dragoon Guards and subsequently Lieutenant-Colonel of the Surrey Regiment of Horse; one of His Majesty's Privy Council and a Justice of Assize in the Island of Jamaica."

Why did James Matthew leave his honourable estate (and estates) in Jamaica in 1830 to come to this community and settle as a gentleman in the comparative wilderness of Hamilton Mountain of that date?

Family legend maintains that the Whyte family was selected by the Duke of Kent to provide a husband and protection for Isabella and that i