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BETHLEHEM, Pa. (AP) — George Washington slept at the Sun Inn? Big deal. Nobody's written a mega-hit hip-hop Broadway musical about George Washington. But Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote one about Alexander Hamilton, and Hamilton slept at the Sun Inn, too. That means the storied tavern on Bethlehem's Main Street has a place on the list of pilgrimage sites for smitten theater-goers who want to visit everywhere the founding father ever set foot. Whether that's drawn sightseers to the inn is hard to say. It's only open for self-guided tours on weekends — plus special-occasion dinners and the odd ghost hunt — so there are no statistics to be had, said Jen Cornish, office manager of the Sun Inn Preservation Association. But no site, it seems, is too obscure or out of the way for devotees. In New York's trendy Soho neighborhood, a clothing store stands on the site of an old well where the body of a murdered woman named Elma Sands was discovered in 1800. Hamilton and Aaron Burr — who, as sitting vice president of the United States, would kill Hamilton in a duel four years later — teamed up to successfully defend Levi Weeks, the victim's lover. The scandalous case had been thoroughly forgotten, but thanks to a fleeting mention in one of the musical's songs, it is forgotten no more. The clothing store, COS, has become a stop on the Hamilton trail. It joins far more prominent locations, especially Weehawken, N.J., where Hamilton was mortally wounded in the July 11, 1804, duel with Burr — the culmination of bitter personal and political rivalries. Hamilton spent at least one night at the Sun Inn in May 1791 during a two-week foray out of Philadelphia. Most histories and newspaper stories about the inn note that he stayed there, but other guests — notably John Adams and George Washington — have received far more ink over the years. Indeed, Charlene Donchez Mowers, director of Historic Bethlehem Museums and Sites, never knew Hamilton had been in the city. She was thrilled to learn so, given that the Marquis de Lafayette — a friend of Hamilton's and a prominent character in the musical — recuperated in the city from battlefield injuries suffered in the Revolutionary War. "That is so exciting," she said. "If (Hamilton) was at the Sun Inn, he would have walked around town. I think we should investigate more." Hamilton's letters and other resources don't specify the purpose of his trip, but it was probably just a vacation. He had mentioned in correspondence with John H. Livingston, an upstate New York lawyer and minister, that he planned to take a tour into the country. The trip predates the beginning of his adulterous relationship with Maria Reynolds, which began in the summer of 1791. For that affair, Hamilton would pay dearly, both in money — Reynolds' husband extorted thousands of dollars out of him — and reputation. Whatever the circumstances, Hamilton surely deserved a vacation at the time. He was busy that year defending his idea for a national bank against criticisms that its creation would be an unconstitutional extension of federal power. He was also engaged in the dense and endless correspondence that was part and parcel of his life as Treasury secretary. The bank issue was of great and lasting consequence. Hamilton, responding to arguments from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, among others, argued that the Constitution not only granted the government specific powers but so-called implied powers that flowed from them. It was enough to convince Washington, who signed the bank bill into law. It was an invigorating victory for Hamilton. But his other day-to-day tasks must have been mind-numbing. He was not writing hip-hop lyrics, after all, but missives such as this one: "I am informed, that a doubt has been made, whether in order to obtain the Credit for two years, for the duties on Teas, according to the Act making provision for the collection of the Duties by law, imposed on Teas and to prolong the term for the payment of the duties on Wines, it is necessary that the Teas be deposited in conformity to the regulations prescribed in the Act ." And so on. Jefferson, for one, thought Hamilton had the right idea in getting out of town. "Col. Hamilton has taken a trip to Bethlehem," he wrote to Washington on May 15, 1791. "I think to avail myself also of the present interval of quiet to get rid of a headach which is very troublesome, by giving more exercise to the body & less to the mind." Hamilton has another connection to the Sun Inn, though an indirect one. In 1799, Pennsylvania German auctioneer John Fries of Quakertown fomented a rebellion against new federal taxes that had been levied to raise money in case increasing tensions with France led to war. In his biography of Hamilton — the book that inspired the play — historian Ron Chernow recounts how marshals arrested a group of protesters and jailed them at the Sun Inn. Fries led 150 militiamen in a raid to free the prisoners, after which President John Adams ordered federal troops under Hamilton's command to end the rebellion. Hamilton, who had advocated quelling the earlier Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania with a huge show of force, used the same tactic against Fries. The rebel ringleaders were arrested, convicted of treason and sentenced to be hanged. Adams angered Hamilton by deeming the sentences too harsh and commuting them. Hamilton's connections to the Lehigh Valley end there. He is not, as many have supposed, the namesake of Hamilton Street in Allentown. That honor belongs to James Hamilton, the brother-in-law of the city's founder, William Allen. Lehigh Valley historian Frank Whelan said he isn't surprised by the eruption of "Hamilton" madness — "It's a very tuneful play" — but cautioned that people enthralled by the stage figure might be a bit dismayed by the facts about the real one. Whelan said Hamilton was a social climber who sometimes put his personal ambition before his ideals. For example, he supported abolition, but married into a slaveholding family and may even have bartered for slaves on behalf of his in-laws. He was something of an elitist, too, perhaps in inverse proportion to his shame over his illegitimate parentage. John Adams, a master knife-twister when it came to feuding, famously called his rival "that bastard brat of a Scottish peddler." "Hamilton," Whelan said, "had a little more than a touch of that feeling that the country should be ruled by the best people. And he was going to stand in line for the role." ___ Online: http://bit.ly/29lFi8G ___ Information from: The Morning Call, http://www.mcall.com

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