It's a story almost too tawdry to be true - a con woman prostitute who met the descendant of a Founding Father in a brothel, duped him into marriage using an infant purchased from a baby farm, then went to prison for stabbing the couple s baby nurse - all while in a common-law marriage with another man. The scandal surrounding Evangeline and Robert Ray Hamilton was one of the sensations of the Gilded Age, a sordid, gripping tale involving bigamy, bribery, sex, and violence. Here the story is told through personal correspondence, court records, and sensational newspaper accounts.