Book excerpt: In 1846, a group of women came together to form what would become one of Hamilton's most important social welfare institutions. Through the Ladies Benevolent Society and Hamilton Orphan Asylum, they managed and administered a charitable visiting society, orphan asylum, and aged women's home. In Private Women and the Public Good, Carmen J. Nielson explores the tension inherent in nineteenth-century women's charitable work, nominally private because it was voluntary and female, but also sustained by public monies, legitimated by law, and serving the so-called public good.