Portrait captioned "Col. William S. Hamilton", and mistsakenly identified in other sources as Philip Hamilton.

• William S. Hamilton was a commander during the 1827 Winnebago War and 1832 Black Hawk War who fought in Illinois and Wisconsin, United States, a miner who served in various political capacities, and son of Alexander Hamilton.
• The image was first published and identified correctly in 1903 in a book titled The Black Hawk War by Frank E. Stevens.
• The identical portrait mistakenly identified as Philip Hamilton (William's oldest brother) in a 1910 book by Allan McLane Hamilton, who was a nephew of both Philip and William. See Hamilton, Allan McLane (1910). The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton is the source of all subsequent misidentification of this portrait in books, publications, and on the internet.
• More recent research by A.K. Fielding author of Rough Diamond: The Life of William Stephen Hamilton ^[1]published 2021 by Indiana University Press, cites the Wisconsin Historical Society has in their collection a letter dated 1880 from Philip Hamilton II identifying the image as a photo of a miniature portrait of his older brother William.