June 21, 2025 • 34 mins
This 2017 episode covers Theodosia Burr Alston, Aaron Burr's incredibly smart and well educated daughter. She vanished without a trace as an adult, and her ultimate fate is still a matter of debate.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. Theodosia Bartoe Burr later Theodosia Burr Alston, was
born on June twenty first, seventeen eighty three. That makes
that two hundred and forty two years ago today, on
the day this episode is coming out. Our episode on
Her and Her Mysterious Disappearance came out on October eighteenth,
twenty seventeen, and it is today's Saturday Classic. Enjoy Welcome
(00:27):
to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I am Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. I have a slight cold voice today,
so apologies at the side of the episode for that. Yeah,
(00:48):
we both caught some crowd while we were in New York, yep,
so that apology aside. The last time we mentioned Hamilton
on the podcast, I said it would be cool to
do an episode about one of the ladies on the
show because Hamilton's men are becoming really well represented in
our podcast archive already. So today that is what we
(01:08):
are doing. She's a figure who played a hugely important
role in that show, despite not singing any songs or
even ever being on stage. It's Theodosia Burr Alston.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
And in keeping with our Halloween theme, because it is October,
we're going to be spending some time on her mysterious
eighteen twelve disappearance and all the stories surrounding it, some
of which are quite macab hooray McCom.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
It's almost impossible to separate Theodosia Burr Alston's life from
her parents, Aaron Burr and Theodosia Barto and when they
met the elder. Theodosia was married to Jacques Marcus Privo
or Provost, depending on how you pronounce it, You're French,
you're American. He is also sometimes known as James Mark Provost,
who was an officer in the British Army.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Jacques and Theodosia had five children together, three daughters and
two sons, none of whom are the subject of this episode.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
They all lived on.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
A two hundred and fifty acre estate in New Jersey
known as the Hermitage, and they lived there along with
Theodosia's widowed mother and an enslaved household staff. When the
Revolutionary War started. Jacques, who had risen to the rank
of lieutenant colonel in earlier wars, returned to service in
the army. He became second in command to his brother Augustine,
(02:24):
and Augustine is actually sometimes incorrectly named as Theodosia's husband.
Jacques's role in the British Army put Theodosia in a
precarious position because the Hermitage was in territory controlled by
the Patriots and she was entertaining a lot of their
most prominent military and political leaders there.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
But somehow she managed to.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Walk a very fine line in which her husband and
most of her male relatives were fighting for the loyalist
cause while she was at home playing host to such
prominent Patriots as the Marquis de Lafayette, John Laurens, Alexander Hamilton,
Charles Lee, James Monroe, and George Washington himself. Yes, basically
the elder Theodosia was hosting the entire cast of Hamilton
(03:09):
at the estate. And of course, there was her future husband,
Aaron Burr, who Theodosia met at the Hermitage while her
husband was stationed in Jamaica. Aaron Burr was a notorious philanderer,
but the first time he saw Theodosia, he was totally
convinced that she was, to use a slightly more recent term,
(03:30):
his soulmate. This was in spite of the fact that
she was married, she was a decade older than he was,
and she already had five children. Eventually, Theodosia's husband was
recalled to Georgia, and after defeating the Patriots' forces there,
he was installed as Lieutenant governor under the British government.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
That delicate line.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
That Theodosia had been walking back at the Hermitage started
to falter. New Jersey law allowed the confiscation of land
belonging to loyalists, and Theodosia's husban was no longer just
an officer in the British army. He was a prominent
part of the British government in North America.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
So an organized effort got underway to try to have
Theodosia and her family evicted from the Hermitage, and among
those who defended her, in part due to her connection
to so many on the patriots side, was Aaron Burr.
Theodosa did eventually leave the Hermitage because the war in
the area became way too precarious for her to be
safe there, but the organized effort to force her off
(04:31):
the property was ultimately dropped.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
In addition to advocating for her to remain at the hermitage,
Aaron Burr spent much of the Revolutionary War preparing for
what he saw as a foregone conclusion that one day
he would marry Theodosia Prevost. As long as he was
stationed anywhere nearby, he visited her as often as he could.
In seventeen seventy nine, at the age of twenty three,
(04:55):
he resigned from the army because of his failing health,
and he resumed his study of law, hoping that that
would allow him to support her. He also developed a
relationship with her two sons and paid for a tutor
to see to their educations.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
In December of seventeen eighty one, Theodosia Provost learned that
her first husband had died, so Aaron Burr had successfully
waited out their relationship. This information actually came to her
second hand from a loyalist newspaper. She never got official
word on it from the British Army. Aaron Burr at
the time was in the middle of applying for admission
(05:30):
to the New York Bar, which he earned on April seventeenth,
seventeen eighty two. And then on July second of that year,
he and Theodosia married at the Hermitage, which she had
returned to earlier in the year, once it was safe
for her to be back there. From there they moved
to Albany, where Aaron Burr set up a profitable law practice.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
And their early marriage was, by all accounts, a very
happy one. Theodosia was extremely intelligent, she was very well read,
and she and her husband shared a keen interesting culture
and art. Aaron Burr saw his wife as an intellectual equal,
and he trusted her to handle aspects of his business
for him. Their marriage also raised an eyebrows since, in
(06:11):
addition to the part where he'd visited so much before
her husband died, she wasn't wealthy, and she also was
not considered to be particularly attractive, and it was assumed
that Aaron Burr would marry someone rich or beautiful or both.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
They made their Albany residence into a place that was
home to French literature and fine art, and on June
twenty first, seventeen eighty three, their daughter, who was christened
Theodosia Barto Burr. The following July, they nicknamed her Miss
Press and in their letters to each other and eventually
to her, they called her Theo. Although the Burrs occupied
(06:46):
a prominent place in Albany society and his law practice
was successful, Aaron Burr wanted to pursue even greater opportunities.
He was, as was the case through.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Much of his life, short on liquid funds, so he
borrowed money from an uncle to relocate the family to
New York City.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Theodosia wound up being nearly the entire focus of her
parents and especially her father's ambitions. Her three half sisters
aren't really mentioned much in the historical record, and they
disappear from it all together. By seventeen ninety one. Her
two half brothers were already old enough to work as
clerks in their father's law office. By the time that
(07:26):
she was born. They both had to swear allegiance to
the United States, since they had been sent to fight
with the British when they were little. Her sister, Sally,
was born on June twentieth of seventeen eighty five, but
she died at the age of only three, and the
younger Theodosia also had two brothers who were both still born,
so it was really Theodosia, who Aaron Burr started grooming
(07:48):
for some future greatness as part of his own personal legacy,
and we're going to talk about how he did that,
but first we're going to pause for a quick little
sponsor break. Both of her parents absolutely adored the young
(08:10):
theodo Ja Burr, and they raised her in a home
that was nurturing and loving. And if they had not,
if they had been distant and cruel people, she could
have easily buckled under her father's demands because his plan
for her education was intense. Aaron Burr is often described
as giving his daughter an education that would have been
expected for a young man from a prominent family, but
(08:32):
it really goes way farther than that. His expectations for
her were incredibly high, and he got to work on
shaping her into a person who could meet those expectations.
Basically as soon as she was born.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
She had multiple tutors dedicated to different subjects, with multi
hour blocks every day devoted to practicing them. It was
a wide ranging education, with its only notable omission being religion,
something people were still commenting on the odditya of one
hundred years later, Theodosia was a brilliant student. Even as
a young child. She was writing her father letters by
(09:08):
the age of three, and writing them well by the
age of five. At the age of eight, she was
assisting her half sister Luisa, who was more than a
decade older, with her math. At ten, she spoke both
French and Latin, and her penmanship looked like it belonged
to a professional calligrapher. And also at that age she
had reportedly read all six volumes of Edward Gibbons The
(09:29):
History and Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. She
was widely regarded as a prodigy. Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication
of the Rights of Woman is often credited as having
inspired Erin Burr to secure this education for his daughter,
and he definitely did read that work in seventeen ninety three,
after which he called it a work of genius. But
(09:50):
by that time, Theodosia's education was already well underway. All
of those accomplishments that Tracy spoke of just a moment
ago had already happened.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
What A Vende of the Rights of Women did do
was make Aaron Burke consider thinking about the education of
other girls, and the way he thought about his own daughters.
He became one of the very few men who was
outspokenly supportive of Wolstencraft's work, especially as it related to
the education of girls.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
And young women.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
He imagined that Theodosia could provide a living example that
girls could and should be educated and could excel in school.
He wrote of his daughter, quote, I hope yet by
her to convince the world what neither sex appears to
believe that women have souls. Even though Theodosia excelled at
her studies and grew into a lively accomplished young woman,
(10:41):
this wasn't without its problems. Aaron Burr spent as much
time at home as he could, but his work did
keep him away for long stretches. This was especially true
when he started his political career, which began with a
term in the New York Assembly the year after Theodosia
was born, and whenever he was gone, it was up
to Theodosia's mother to carry out the exacting educational plans
(11:02):
that he had created. So just overseeing her daughter's education
might not have been too much for the elder Theodosia
to handle, but simultaneously she also had to oversee the
management of their various New York City households, including the
enslaved staff. She was also entrusted with carrying out various
business matters on her husband's behalf. At the same time,
(11:23):
her health had already been really poor even before her
second marriage.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Toward the end of seventeen ninety three, the elder Theodosia's
health really started to fail, and she was given a
wide range of treatments, from hemlock to laudanum, to wine
to mercury, and none of this worked, and she died
at home on May eighteenth of seventeen ninety four. The
actual cause of death was most likely stomach cancer. The
(11:50):
young Theodosia was only ten when her mother died. She
had been the person most responsible for her mother's care
in the last months of her life. Her father, by
then a senator, returned to work almost immediately. Theodosia threw
herself into her studies, and she gradually started taking on
additional duties that had formerly been handled by her mother.
(12:12):
The Burrs had multiple residences in and around New York,
but following the death of his wife, Aaron and Theodosia
made a mansion known as Richmond Hill. Their primary home,
and that is the younger Theodosia.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
We're speaking of.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
An enslaved staff of approximately ten people saw to the
day to day care and management of the property, including
cook's maids, coachmen, a valet, and a doormen. By her
early teens, Theodosia was officially the mistress of the house,
and by running the household and acting as hostess, Theodosia
met and interacted with an incredibly posh list of guests,
(12:47):
including politicians, statesmen, and war heroes. Her education was also
still ongoing even as she was basically running the household.
Around the time of her mother's death, she acquired a
new teacher from France known as Madame de Sinot, who
was governess to Natalie Delage de Valeude. The two of them,
along with Sinnat's own daughter, had fled the French Revolution,
(13:10):
and upon arriving in New York, Madame de Sinat had
set to work establishing a school to cater to the
children of prominent families. There she lived and worked from
a residence that Burr also used as an office, and
Natalie and Theodosia, who were about the same age, became
best friends. In eighteen hundred two things happened that would
radically change Theodosia's life. One was an incredibly convoluted presidential election,
(13:35):
which would ultimately wind up with her father becoming the
third vice president of the United States. The other is
that she met South Carolina planter Joseph Alston. Joseph was
wealthy and educated, and he had practiced law before turning
his attention to agriculture. His rice plantation on the Wacamaw
(13:55):
River covered more than six thousand acres, which were worked
by more than two hundred enslaved Africans.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Theodosia was definitely attracted to Joseph, but one of the
hallmarks of her education had been rational thought. She believed
they were much too young to get married. That she
was only seventeen and he was twenty one. She thought
a way more appropriate age for a man to get
married was thirty. She told Joseph she would only agree
to marry him if he made an argument strong enough
(14:24):
to convince her that it was the best thing to do,
along with easing her concerns about what life would be
like as the wife of a planner in South Carolina.
He returned with a letter that was clearly influenced by
his time in law, in which he suggested that the
negative things she'd heard about plantation life were just rumors
spread by northern abolitionists, that Charleston was a beautiful and
(14:46):
cosmopolitan city, that there were other educated and intelligent women
in South Carolina, and that the primary arguments against marrying
young were discretion and fortune, the two of them, he reasoned,
had plenty of. Theodosia finally agreed with him, and they
got married in Albany on February second of eighteen oh one.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
In spite of.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Her youth, Theodosia was probably the most educated woman in
the United States at the time.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Just over two weeks later, the House of Representatives, having
voted on the matter thirty six times, finally elected Thomas
Jefferson to be the third President of the United States,
making Burr his vice president. Almost immediately, Burr nominated Joseph
Alston as Charge de fair to the US Minister to France,
imagining that Theodosia might continue her education there, but Joseph
(15:37):
decided to stick with his plantation.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
We will get to Theodosia's married life and her eventual
disappearance after another quick sponsor break. In seventeen oh one,
Theodosia and Joseph departed on a bridal tour, simultaneously starting
a trend by being the first prominent couple to visit
(16:01):
Niagara Falls on their honeymoon. By the time they got
home again, Theodosia was pregnant and a son, Aaron Burr Alston,
was born around May twenty second of eighteen oh two.
His grandfather wanted so badly to be present for the
birth of his grandson that he actually left the Capitol
while Congress was still in sessions so he could get
there in time. The young Aaron's birth was long and difficult,
(16:24):
and the delivery caused a uterine prolapse. A minor prolapse
often doesn't require much medical treatment, but Theodosia's case was severe.
It caused her extreme pain for the rest of her life,
along with irregular and very painful periods, and it also
made her unable to have any more children and led
to recurring infections. Since there was no reliable way to
(16:46):
treat these infections, they threatened her life on more than
one occasion. The field of gynecology really didn't exist yet,
and no one fully understood what was going on or
how to treat it. Plus, the symptoms that she was
experiencing were so taboo and they caused her so much
embarrassment that when she wrote to a doctor to describe
what was happening to her, she did it all in
(17:06):
third person. About three weeks after her son's birth, Theodosia
and the baby boarded a ship to go to New
York to stay with her father for several months.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Which became an annual event.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
This was as much about trying to recover from the
birth of her son as it was about trying to
recover from culture shock. The South was, as a whole
deeply religious, and Theodosia was not. She was also just
not what anyone expected of a planter's wife. Although Charleston
society might have been more welcoming of an exceptionally educated woman,
a swampy rice plantation on.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
The Wakama River was far far from there.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Plus, although Aaron Burr enslaved people at his New York estates,
and Theodosia had been responsible to some extent in their
management while she was running the household, he had also
allowed them all to learn to read and write, and
he had argued in favor of New York's gradual amann
it a patient Act which went into effect in seventeen
ninety nine. So people who owned lots of slaves not
(18:05):
necessarily the biggest fan of Aaron Burr and his politics.
But as Joseph's wife, it was Theodosa's responsibility to manage
and monitor the domestic life and health of the whole
enslaved workforce, and essentially to act as its quartermaster in
accordance with Southern expectations. This was a world away from
New York, where running her father's household had meant arranging
(18:26):
dinners and soires for presidents and diplomats. That had not
meant things like distributing annual cloth and allotments to hundreds
of enslaved people. Theodosia and her husband definitely missed each
other in these annual stretches of months and months when
she was away, but South Carolina just did not feel
like home to her, and New York did. Then.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
On July eleventh, eighteen oh four, when she was twenty one,
Diodosia's father shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel, and Hamilton,
of course, later died of that wound. Aaron Burr was
charged with murder, but he was never tried. There is
a whole podcast about this in the archives, so we're
not going to go into deep detail on that.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
As a note, only because people have written in to
ask us about it. You will sometimes hear that Aaron
Burr's real motive for this duel was that Alexander Hamilton
knew he was committing incest with Theodosia and had been
spreading that around. But this really comes from Gorvidal's nineteen
seventy three novel Burr, and his logic as a writer
was basically that it was the one thing he could
(19:28):
think of that would make Aaron Burr angry enough to
kill Alexander Hamilton. There's really no evidence that there was
physical incest going on, but it is absolutely true that
Burr's relationship with his daughter did not have anything like
what we would call healthy emotional boundaries today at all.
She became a definitely became an emotional surrogate for her
(19:49):
mother after her mother's death, and their relationship was intense
in a way that would not strike people as normal.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
The duel with alexand Hamilton was not Burr's only crime.
He also embarked on a weird scheme to invade Mexico,
separate off the western part of the US territory, and
succeed setting all of that up as his personal empire,
with Theodosia succeeding him as empress after his death. There
is a whole episode about that in the archive as well,
(20:19):
and that is actually going to be our Saturday Classic
this week. Yeah, that seems like a bizarre story to
bring up and not really get into it, but this
episode is not about Aaron Burr, so we will leave
that to past hosts to cover on Saturday. Long story short,
Aaron Burr was arrested for treason on February nineteenth, eighteen
oh seven, and he faced trial in Richmond, Virginia. In
(20:41):
spite of her health, Theodosia and her husband traveled there
to be with him throughout the proceedings. Even though he
was acquitted.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
On September first, his reputation was ruined and he became
the target of public outrage even more than he already
had for killing Alexander Hamilton. Theodosia's reputation was tarnished by
association as well. Aaron Burr fled to Europe, hoping to
make a brief escape while the outrage blew over, but
(21:09):
when he tried to return, he was refused a passport
and he was barred from re entering the country for
more than four years. Theodosia went from supporting her father
while on trial to trying to convince his adversaries to
let him back into the country. He was finally allowed
to return in eighteen twelve, and he arrived on May fourth.
(21:30):
His homecoming was soon marred by tragedy. Aaron Burr Alston
died on June thirtieth, eighteen twelve, of a summer fever
or possibly malaria, and Theodosia was absolutely distraught at the
death of her son. The only thing that motivated her
to go on living was the idea of being reunited
with her father.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Of course, this was during the War of eighteen twelve.
Theodosia's husband had been elected governor of South Carolina and
was brigadier general of the state militias, so he could
not accompany her on this trip. An overland voyage would
have been far too long and uncomfortable for someone with
her physical condition, so the only way she could get
to her father was by sea. It would take less
(22:12):
than a week, but it was an already uncertain means
of travel through an active warzone that was also infested
with pirates. Theodosia's husband thought this was an incredibly dangerous idea,
but she was so devastated and so sick that he
couldn't even consider trying to stop her from going. So
she departed from Georgetown, South Carolina, aboard a small pilot
(22:34):
boat called the Patriot, on December thirty first, eighteen twelve.
Some accountsless this is the thirtieth. Doctor Timothy Ruggles Green
went with her because of her illness and her health,
and she probably had a maid and maybe a cook
with her as well. Joseph boarded the boat with them.
He kissed Theodosia goodbye, and then he rowed himself back
to shore alone. Once the Patriots slipped out of view,
(22:58):
it was never seen again.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
For weeks, both Aaron Burr and Joseph Alston held out
hope that Theodosia was still somehow alive. The two men
wrote each other increasingly frantic letters, especially after they heard that,
in spite of the fine weather in Georgetown, when the
ship set sail, a heavy storm had struck the coast
of North Carolina not long after she left.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
They clung to.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Hope for weeks, but when it eventually became clear that
Theodosia was gone, they were both broken men. Joseph Alston
completed his term as governor in eighteen fourteen, after weathering
a number of scandals and blackmail attempts related to that
Mexico invasion plot, which he had contributed money to. He
died on September tenth, eighteen sixteen, at the age of
(23:44):
thirty seven. Aaron Burr died twenty years later, and in
the years after Theodosia's disappearance, he had put everything that
reminded him of her out of sight. Speculation about what
happened started immediately after the disappearance of the Patriot, and
it cantinued for decades. To quote a New York Times
piece written for the one hundredth anniversary of the disappearance,
(24:08):
summing up what all that speculation had been for all
those decades, Quote, what happened to Theodosia Burr Alston, the
beautiful daughter of Aaron Burr, vice President of the United
States and the reigning bell of diplomatic society? Was she
shipwrecked in a storm at sea. Was she kidnapped by pirates?
Was she forced to walk the plank into the ocean?
Was she held a prisoner? Was she abandoned on an island?
(24:30):
Was she the ill fated victim of her father's political enemies?
Was her life the absolution which washed the stain of
Alexander Hamilton's blood from her father's hands. The only thing
that we know for sure is that they were not
stopped by the British Navy. In nineteen ninety eight, James L.
Mitchie scoured the logs of all British ships that had
(24:51):
been patrolling off the Carolina coast, and none of them
had any record of an encounter with the Patriot.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
There are naturally a slew of eerie and sometimes Macob's
story is about what happened to the Patriot and everyone aboard,
and some of them emerged while Theodosia's husband and father
were still alive. Theodosia's best friend, Natalie, had a series
of premonitions that made her fear for Theodosia's life in
October of eighteen thirteen, So this was well after the
(25:19):
Patriots set sail, but before she had heard anything about
what had happened. She ended a letter to a friend quote,
I think she must be dead.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
A series of pirates also gave multiple contradictory deathbed confessions
about having captured the Patriot and killed everyone aboard, including Theodosia.
A June twenty third, eighteen twenty article and The Mercantile
Advisor reported that Jean Defarge and Robert Johnson, privateers aboard
the Patriot, had confessed to taking over the ship two
(25:52):
or three days into the journey, trapping everyone in the hold,
stealing all of the valuables, and sinking the boat on
their way out. Although they were tried, convicted, and executed
for this crime, they also said the Patriot left from
Charleston when it really left from Georgetown, and they also
said that the weather had been good the whole time,
So there were a lot of contradictions in their account.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
It seems maybe weird that somebody would make up a
confession to a crime that would get them executed, but
like they were on trial for other stuff as well,
So if this is a whole made up story, it
was made up to bring them personal infamy because they
already knew that regardless of what all they testified to
they were going to be executed. Another confession made by
(26:36):
James Burdick, who was known as Old Frank, was reported
from Michigan in eighteen fifty. He had made an agreement
with some neighbors that they could have his house after
he died if they looked after him in his old age.
So in his final years, as they were taking care
of him, he told them all kinds of stories about
his time as a pirate, including that he had captured
(26:57):
the Patriot and given Theodosia a choice of becoming concubine
or walking the plank. According to Verdic, she chose the latter, saying,
quote vengeance's mind saith the Lord, I will repay on
her way down. There's no substantiation on this story, and
walking the plank is also way more associated with sensational
(27:17):
fiction than with anything actual pirates did. Plus, as we've
said before, Theodosia was not really a religious woman. This
I captured the Patriot and made Theodosia walk the plank
story became a common theme, appearing not only in the
deathbed confessions of other purported pirates, but also the plot
of several sensational novels.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Not every novel ended with a plank walk though.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
In Blenner Hassett or The Decrees of Fate, a romance
founded upon events in American History, which was a book
published in nineteen oh one, the pirate captain falls in
love with Theodosia and she is accidentally shot by someone.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
In the navy who was aiming for him. Yeah, the guy.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Who wrote this book wrote another book that was also
a fictionalization of her life, and he used all his
research for this to make one of the to write
one of the first biographies of her, which you can
find on the internet at archive dot org.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
It'll be linked in the show notes.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
But in a way it's frustrating to read because it
has chapters and chapters and chapters that are about her
ancestors before it actually gets to her, and then it's
very clear that there is some bias involved and how
he tells the story of her life. Anyway, outside the
world of piracy, we're leaving pirates behind. There is a
(28:37):
grave at Saint Paul's Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia that
is known as the Grave of the Female Stranger. So,
according to the lore, a man and a woman arrived
in Alexandria in eighteen sixteen, and the woman was very sick.
When a doctor was summoned, the couple would permit no
questions about who they were. The woman died on October
(28:59):
fourteenth of eighteen sixteen, and was buried in a grave
under an inscription that begins quote to the memory of
a female stranger whose mortal sufferings terminated on the fourteenth
day of October eighteen sixteen, aged twenty three years and
eight months. One theory, even though this was a couple
of years after she disappeared, and she would have been
(29:20):
older than twenty three, as at the identity of the
woman buried in this grave as Theodosia Burr Alston.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Fifty seven years after the disappearance of the Patriot, a
doctor named W. G. Poole was summaring at Nagshead, North Carolina,
when he was called on to see an elderly woman
known as Missus Mann. As a gesture of thanks and
in lieu of cash payment, she gave him an oil
portrait of a lady which he had admired. While he
(29:48):
was attending to her in her home.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Doctor Poole tried to get Missus Mann to tell him
where this picture had come from, and she finally told
him that her husband had been a wrecker, basically somebody
who made a living by salvaging wrecked ships off of
the outer banks, and sometimes these outer banks wreckers are
known as bankers.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
He and some.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Others had found a ship completely abandoned, and in some
versions of the story nothing seemed to miss and a
meal was even laid out on the table, and other
accounts everything was in disarray. But regardless, this painting was
purportedly from one of the cabins on the boat, which
clearly belonged to a woman. Somebody eventually suggested that this
(30:29):
painting was off Theodosia Burr Alston.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
It's hard to determine whether this painting, known as the
Nag's Head Portrait, really is Theodosia. The two authenticated portraits
of her don't look anything alike, and the Nag's Head
portrait doesn't look like either of them either. Members of
the Burr family insisted that it was her, but several
of the Alstons disagreed.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
At this point, it's not really possible to determine if
this is really a painting of Theodosia burr Alston. But
it's one of the most talked about theories for not
even really a theory for her disappearance, like if she
did if she was on the boat and that was
a picture of her, that part makes sense because maybe
she was carrying this painting of herself to her father,
who was she was going to visit. But it raises
(31:13):
lots of questions about when she would have sat for
the painting, and then of course what happened to everyone
on the boat when they either abandoned it or were
taken off of it, leaving the painting behind. We're going
to end on what's probably the creepiest story and also
the most recent. Ja Elliott of Norfolk, Virginia reported a
story in nineteen ten that he had heard earlier from
(31:35):
people living in the area. A woman's body in fine
clothing had washed up on the coast in January of
eighteen thirteen, and then a gentleman who found the body
had buried it on his farm, but before doing so,
he had cut three of its fingers off so he
could remove rings that she was wearing. When he later
(31:55):
had a daughter, she was born with the same three
fingers missing. It said that the reason that it was
almost one hundred years before anybody had suggested that maybe
this was Theodosia was that nobody had written the area
knew about Theodosia's disappearance, but as soon as he heard
about it, he made that connection. So there's most of
the weird theories about what maybe happened. The most logical
(32:17):
theory is probably that the boat sank in a storm
like that seems like the most straightforward one, but having
so many weird stories about other people's claiming that they
captured it to spirates or that they they saw her
somewhere afterwards. Like, there's a bunch of other weird rumors
that we didn't really get it to of, like, oh,
I definitely saw her somewhere.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
She was definitely alive.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
There's that way that when any mystery exists in the
public consciousness, people step in to fill in the blanks,
even when those are not accurate at all.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Yeah, well, this.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Was all over newspapers, and I read a whole bunch
of things from like one hundred year old copies of
like the New York Times in the Boston Globe, obviously
scanned and on the internet. I didn't go dig them
physically up, but they're kept being all these reports about her,
like she really was a famous person when she died,
(33:13):
although at that point, like her association with her father's
killing of Alexander Hamilton and weird scheme to take over
his own personal empire like that had people didn't have
maybe quite as much of a glowing perception of her.
But she and her husband were definitely famous figures when
she vanished, and the story of her disappearance was just
(33:35):
this huge source for rumors and gossip for decades after
it happened. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday.
If you'd like to send us a note, our email
addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can
(33:57):
subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. MHM
Happy Saturday. Theodosia Bartoe Burr later Theodosia Burr Alston, was
born on June twenty first, seventeen eighty three. That makes
that two hundred and forty two years ago today, on
the day this episode is coming out. Our episode on
Her and Her Mysterious Disappearance came out on October eighteenth,
twenty seventeen, and it is today's Saturday Classic. Enjoy Welcome
(00:27):
to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I am Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. I have a slight cold voice today,
so apologies at the side of the episode for that. Yeah,
(00:48):
we both caught some crowd while we were in New York, yep,
so that apology aside. The last time we mentioned Hamilton
on the podcast, I said it would be cool to
do an episode about one of the ladies on the
show because Hamilton's men are becoming really well represented in
our podcast archive already. So today that is what we
(01:08):
are doing. She's a figure who played a hugely important
role in that show, despite not singing any songs or
even ever being on stage. It's Theodosia Burr Alston.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
And in keeping with our Halloween theme, because it is October,
we're going to be spending some time on her mysterious
eighteen twelve disappearance and all the stories surrounding it, some
of which are quite macab hooray McCom.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
It's almost impossible to separate Theodosia Burr Alston's life from
her parents, Aaron Burr and Theodosia Barto and when they
met the elder. Theodosia was married to Jacques Marcus Privo
or Provost, depending on how you pronounce it, You're French,
you're American. He is also sometimes known as James Mark Provost,
who was an officer in the British Army.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Jacques and Theodosia had five children together, three daughters and
two sons, none of whom are the subject of this episode.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
They all lived on.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
A two hundred and fifty acre estate in New Jersey
known as the Hermitage, and they lived there along with
Theodosia's widowed mother and an enslaved household staff. When the
Revolutionary War started. Jacques, who had risen to the rank
of lieutenant colonel in earlier wars, returned to service in
the army. He became second in command to his brother Augustine,
(02:24):
and Augustine is actually sometimes incorrectly named as Theodosia's husband.
Jacques's role in the British Army put Theodosia in a
precarious position because the Hermitage was in territory controlled by
the Patriots and she was entertaining a lot of their
most prominent military and political leaders there.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
But somehow she managed to.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Walk a very fine line in which her husband and
most of her male relatives were fighting for the loyalist
cause while she was at home playing host to such
prominent Patriots as the Marquis de Lafayette, John Laurens, Alexander Hamilton,
Charles Lee, James Monroe, and George Washington himself. Yes, basically
the elder Theodosia was hosting the entire cast of Hamilton
(03:09):
at the estate. And of course, there was her future husband,
Aaron Burr, who Theodosia met at the Hermitage while her
husband was stationed in Jamaica. Aaron Burr was a notorious philanderer,
but the first time he saw Theodosia, he was totally
convinced that she was, to use a slightly more recent term,
(03:30):
his soulmate. This was in spite of the fact that
she was married, she was a decade older than he was,
and she already had five children. Eventually, Theodosia's husband was
recalled to Georgia, and after defeating the Patriots' forces there,
he was installed as Lieutenant governor under the British government.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
That delicate line.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
That Theodosia had been walking back at the Hermitage started
to falter. New Jersey law allowed the confiscation of land
belonging to loyalists, and Theodosia's husban was no longer just
an officer in the British army. He was a prominent
part of the British government in North America.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
So an organized effort got underway to try to have
Theodosia and her family evicted from the Hermitage, and among
those who defended her, in part due to her connection
to so many on the patriots side, was Aaron Burr.
Theodosa did eventually leave the Hermitage because the war in
the area became way too precarious for her to be
safe there, but the organized effort to force her off
(04:31):
the property was ultimately dropped.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
In addition to advocating for her to remain at the hermitage,
Aaron Burr spent much of the Revolutionary War preparing for
what he saw as a foregone conclusion that one day
he would marry Theodosia Prevost. As long as he was
stationed anywhere nearby, he visited her as often as he could.
In seventeen seventy nine, at the age of twenty three,
(04:55):
he resigned from the army because of his failing health,
and he resumed his study of law, hoping that that
would allow him to support her. He also developed a
relationship with her two sons and paid for a tutor
to see to their educations.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
In December of seventeen eighty one, Theodosia Provost learned that
her first husband had died, so Aaron Burr had successfully
waited out their relationship. This information actually came to her
second hand from a loyalist newspaper. She never got official
word on it from the British Army. Aaron Burr at
the time was in the middle of applying for admission
(05:30):
to the New York Bar, which he earned on April seventeenth,
seventeen eighty two. And then on July second of that year,
he and Theodosia married at the Hermitage, which she had
returned to earlier in the year, once it was safe
for her to be back there. From there they moved
to Albany, where Aaron Burr set up a profitable law practice.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
And their early marriage was, by all accounts, a very
happy one. Theodosia was extremely intelligent, she was very well read,
and she and her husband shared a keen interesting culture
and art. Aaron Burr saw his wife as an intellectual equal,
and he trusted her to handle aspects of his business
for him. Their marriage also raised an eyebrows since, in
(06:11):
addition to the part where he'd visited so much before
her husband died, she wasn't wealthy, and she also was
not considered to be particularly attractive, and it was assumed
that Aaron Burr would marry someone rich or beautiful or both.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
They made their Albany residence into a place that was
home to French literature and fine art, and on June
twenty first, seventeen eighty three, their daughter, who was christened
Theodosia Barto Burr. The following July, they nicknamed her Miss
Press and in their letters to each other and eventually
to her, they called her Theo. Although the Burrs occupied
(06:46):
a prominent place in Albany society and his law practice
was successful, Aaron Burr wanted to pursue even greater opportunities.
He was, as was the case through.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Much of his life, short on liquid funds, so he
borrowed money from an uncle to relocate the family to
New York City.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Theodosia wound up being nearly the entire focus of her
parents and especially her father's ambitions. Her three half sisters
aren't really mentioned much in the historical record, and they
disappear from it all together. By seventeen ninety one. Her
two half brothers were already old enough to work as
clerks in their father's law office. By the time that
(07:26):
she was born. They both had to swear allegiance to
the United States, since they had been sent to fight
with the British when they were little. Her sister, Sally,
was born on June twentieth of seventeen eighty five, but
she died at the age of only three, and the
younger Theodosia also had two brothers who were both still born,
so it was really Theodosia, who Aaron Burr started grooming
(07:48):
for some future greatness as part of his own personal legacy,
and we're going to talk about how he did that,
but first we're going to pause for a quick little
sponsor break. Both of her parents absolutely adored the young
(08:10):
theodo Ja Burr, and they raised her in a home
that was nurturing and loving. And if they had not,
if they had been distant and cruel people, she could
have easily buckled under her father's demands because his plan
for her education was intense. Aaron Burr is often described
as giving his daughter an education that would have been
expected for a young man from a prominent family, but
(08:32):
it really goes way farther than that. His expectations for
her were incredibly high, and he got to work on
shaping her into a person who could meet those expectations.
Basically as soon as she was born.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
She had multiple tutors dedicated to different subjects, with multi
hour blocks every day devoted to practicing them. It was
a wide ranging education, with its only notable omission being religion,
something people were still commenting on the odditya of one
hundred years later, Theodosia was a brilliant student. Even as
a young child. She was writing her father letters by
(09:08):
the age of three, and writing them well by the
age of five. At the age of eight, she was
assisting her half sister Luisa, who was more than a
decade older, with her math. At ten, she spoke both
French and Latin, and her penmanship looked like it belonged
to a professional calligrapher. And also at that age she
had reportedly read all six volumes of Edward Gibbons The
(09:29):
History and Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. She
was widely regarded as a prodigy. Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication
of the Rights of Woman is often credited as having
inspired Erin Burr to secure this education for his daughter,
and he definitely did read that work in seventeen ninety three,
after which he called it a work of genius. But
(09:50):
by that time, Theodosia's education was already well underway. All
of those accomplishments that Tracy spoke of just a moment
ago had already happened.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
What A Vende of the Rights of Women did do
was make Aaron Burke consider thinking about the education of
other girls, and the way he thought about his own daughters.
He became one of the very few men who was
outspokenly supportive of Wolstencraft's work, especially as it related to
the education of girls.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
And young women.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
He imagined that Theodosia could provide a living example that
girls could and should be educated and could excel in school.
He wrote of his daughter, quote, I hope yet by
her to convince the world what neither sex appears to
believe that women have souls. Even though Theodosia excelled at
her studies and grew into a lively accomplished young woman,
(10:41):
this wasn't without its problems. Aaron Burr spent as much
time at home as he could, but his work did
keep him away for long stretches. This was especially true
when he started his political career, which began with a
term in the New York Assembly the year after Theodosia
was born, and whenever he was gone, it was up
to Theodosia's mother to carry out the exacting educational plans
(11:02):
that he had created. So just overseeing her daughter's education
might not have been too much for the elder Theodosia
to handle, but simultaneously she also had to oversee the
management of their various New York City households, including the
enslaved staff. She was also entrusted with carrying out various
business matters on her husband's behalf. At the same time,
(11:23):
her health had already been really poor even before her
second marriage.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Toward the end of seventeen ninety three, the elder Theodosia's
health really started to fail, and she was given a
wide range of treatments, from hemlock to laudanum, to wine
to mercury, and none of this worked, and she died
at home on May eighteenth of seventeen ninety four. The
actual cause of death was most likely stomach cancer. The
(11:50):
young Theodosia was only ten when her mother died. She
had been the person most responsible for her mother's care
in the last months of her life. Her father, by
then a senator, returned to work almost immediately. Theodosia threw
herself into her studies, and she gradually started taking on
additional duties that had formerly been handled by her mother.
(12:12):
The Burrs had multiple residences in and around New York,
but following the death of his wife, Aaron and Theodosia
made a mansion known as Richmond Hill. Their primary home,
and that is the younger Theodosia.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
We're speaking of.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
An enslaved staff of approximately ten people saw to the
day to day care and management of the property, including
cook's maids, coachmen, a valet, and a doormen. By her
early teens, Theodosia was officially the mistress of the house,
and by running the household and acting as hostess, Theodosia
met and interacted with an incredibly posh list of guests,
(12:47):
including politicians, statesmen, and war heroes. Her education was also
still ongoing even as she was basically running the household.
Around the time of her mother's death, she acquired a
new teacher from France known as Madame de Sinot, who
was governess to Natalie Delage de Valeude. The two of them,
along with Sinnat's own daughter, had fled the French Revolution,
(13:10):
and upon arriving in New York, Madame de Sinat had
set to work establishing a school to cater to the
children of prominent families. There she lived and worked from
a residence that Burr also used as an office, and
Natalie and Theodosia, who were about the same age, became
best friends. In eighteen hundred two things happened that would
radically change Theodosia's life. One was an incredibly convoluted presidential election,
(13:35):
which would ultimately wind up with her father becoming the
third vice president of the United States. The other is
that she met South Carolina planter Joseph Alston. Joseph was
wealthy and educated, and he had practiced law before turning
his attention to agriculture. His rice plantation on the Wacamaw
(13:55):
River covered more than six thousand acres, which were worked
by more than two hundred enslaved Africans.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Theodosia was definitely attracted to Joseph, but one of the
hallmarks of her education had been rational thought. She believed
they were much too young to get married. That she
was only seventeen and he was twenty one. She thought
a way more appropriate age for a man to get
married was thirty. She told Joseph she would only agree
to marry him if he made an argument strong enough
(14:24):
to convince her that it was the best thing to do,
along with easing her concerns about what life would be
like as the wife of a planner in South Carolina.
He returned with a letter that was clearly influenced by
his time in law, in which he suggested that the
negative things she'd heard about plantation life were just rumors
spread by northern abolitionists, that Charleston was a beautiful and
(14:46):
cosmopolitan city, that there were other educated and intelligent women
in South Carolina, and that the primary arguments against marrying
young were discretion and fortune, the two of them, he reasoned,
had plenty of. Theodosia finally agreed with him, and they
got married in Albany on February second of eighteen oh one.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
In spite of.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Her youth, Theodosia was probably the most educated woman in
the United States at the time.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Just over two weeks later, the House of Representatives, having
voted on the matter thirty six times, finally elected Thomas
Jefferson to be the third President of the United States,
making Burr his vice president. Almost immediately, Burr nominated Joseph
Alston as Charge de fair to the US Minister to France,
imagining that Theodosia might continue her education there, but Joseph
(15:37):
decided to stick with his plantation.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
We will get to Theodosia's married life and her eventual
disappearance after another quick sponsor break. In seventeen oh one,
Theodosia and Joseph departed on a bridal tour, simultaneously starting
a trend by being the first prominent couple to visit
(16:01):
Niagara Falls on their honeymoon. By the time they got
home again, Theodosia was pregnant and a son, Aaron Burr Alston,
was born around May twenty second of eighteen oh two.
His grandfather wanted so badly to be present for the
birth of his grandson that he actually left the Capitol
while Congress was still in sessions so he could get
there in time. The young Aaron's birth was long and difficult,
(16:24):
and the delivery caused a uterine prolapse. A minor prolapse
often doesn't require much medical treatment, but Theodosia's case was severe.
It caused her extreme pain for the rest of her life,
along with irregular and very painful periods, and it also
made her unable to have any more children and led
to recurring infections. Since there was no reliable way to
(16:46):
treat these infections, they threatened her life on more than
one occasion. The field of gynecology really didn't exist yet,
and no one fully understood what was going on or
how to treat it. Plus, the symptoms that she was
experiencing were so taboo and they caused her so much
embarrassment that when she wrote to a doctor to describe
what was happening to her, she did it all in
(17:06):
third person. About three weeks after her son's birth, Theodosia
and the baby boarded a ship to go to New
York to stay with her father for several months.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Which became an annual event.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
This was as much about trying to recover from the
birth of her son as it was about trying to
recover from culture shock. The South was, as a whole
deeply religious, and Theodosia was not. She was also just
not what anyone expected of a planter's wife. Although Charleston
society might have been more welcoming of an exceptionally educated woman,
a swampy rice plantation on.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
The Wakama River was far far from there.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Plus, although Aaron Burr enslaved people at his New York estates,
and Theodosia had been responsible to some extent in their
management while she was running the household, he had also
allowed them all to learn to read and write, and
he had argued in favor of New York's gradual amann
it a patient Act which went into effect in seventeen
ninety nine. So people who owned lots of slaves not
(18:05):
necessarily the biggest fan of Aaron Burr and his politics.
But as Joseph's wife, it was Theodosa's responsibility to manage
and monitor the domestic life and health of the whole
enslaved workforce, and essentially to act as its quartermaster in
accordance with Southern expectations. This was a world away from
New York, where running her father's household had meant arranging
(18:26):
dinners and soires for presidents and diplomats. That had not
meant things like distributing annual cloth and allotments to hundreds
of enslaved people. Theodosia and her husband definitely missed each
other in these annual stretches of months and months when
she was away, but South Carolina just did not feel
like home to her, and New York did. Then.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
On July eleventh, eighteen oh four, when she was twenty one,
Diodosia's father shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel, and Hamilton,
of course, later died of that wound. Aaron Burr was
charged with murder, but he was never tried. There is
a whole podcast about this in the archives, so we're
not going to go into deep detail on that.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
As a note, only because people have written in to
ask us about it. You will sometimes hear that Aaron
Burr's real motive for this duel was that Alexander Hamilton
knew he was committing incest with Theodosia and had been
spreading that around. But this really comes from Gorvidal's nineteen
seventy three novel Burr, and his logic as a writer
was basically that it was the one thing he could
(19:28):
think of that would make Aaron Burr angry enough to
kill Alexander Hamilton. There's really no evidence that there was
physical incest going on, but it is absolutely true that
Burr's relationship with his daughter did not have anything like
what we would call healthy emotional boundaries today at all.
She became a definitely became an emotional surrogate for her
(19:49):
mother after her mother's death, and their relationship was intense
in a way that would not strike people as normal.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
The duel with alexand Hamilton was not Burr's only crime.
He also embarked on a weird scheme to invade Mexico,
separate off the western part of the US territory, and
succeed setting all of that up as his personal empire,
with Theodosia succeeding him as empress after his death. There
is a whole episode about that in the archive as well,
(20:19):
and that is actually going to be our Saturday Classic
this week. Yeah, that seems like a bizarre story to
bring up and not really get into it, but this
episode is not about Aaron Burr, so we will leave
that to past hosts to cover on Saturday. Long story short,
Aaron Burr was arrested for treason on February nineteenth, eighteen
oh seven, and he faced trial in Richmond, Virginia. In
(20:41):
spite of her health, Theodosia and her husband traveled there
to be with him throughout the proceedings. Even though he
was acquitted.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
On September first, his reputation was ruined and he became
the target of public outrage even more than he already
had for killing Alexander Hamilton. Theodosia's reputation was tarnished by
association as well. Aaron Burr fled to Europe, hoping to
make a brief escape while the outrage blew over, but
(21:09):
when he tried to return, he was refused a passport
and he was barred from re entering the country for
more than four years. Theodosia went from supporting her father
while on trial to trying to convince his adversaries to
let him back into the country. He was finally allowed
to return in eighteen twelve, and he arrived on May fourth.
(21:30):
His homecoming was soon marred by tragedy. Aaron Burr Alston
died on June thirtieth, eighteen twelve, of a summer fever
or possibly malaria, and Theodosia was absolutely distraught at the
death of her son. The only thing that motivated her
to go on living was the idea of being reunited
with her father.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Of course, this was during the War of eighteen twelve.
Theodosia's husband had been elected governor of South Carolina and
was brigadier general of the state militias, so he could
not accompany her on this trip. An overland voyage would
have been far too long and uncomfortable for someone with
her physical condition, so the only way she could get
to her father was by sea. It would take less
(22:12):
than a week, but it was an already uncertain means
of travel through an active warzone that was also infested
with pirates. Theodosia's husband thought this was an incredibly dangerous idea,
but she was so devastated and so sick that he
couldn't even consider trying to stop her from going. So
she departed from Georgetown, South Carolina, aboard a small pilot
(22:34):
boat called the Patriot, on December thirty first, eighteen twelve.
Some accountsless this is the thirtieth. Doctor Timothy Ruggles Green
went with her because of her illness and her health,
and she probably had a maid and maybe a cook
with her as well. Joseph boarded the boat with them.
He kissed Theodosia goodbye, and then he rowed himself back
to shore alone. Once the Patriots slipped out of view,
(22:58):
it was never seen again.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
For weeks, both Aaron Burr and Joseph Alston held out
hope that Theodosia was still somehow alive. The two men
wrote each other increasingly frantic letters, especially after they heard that,
in spite of the fine weather in Georgetown, when the
ship set sail, a heavy storm had struck the coast
of North Carolina not long after she left.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
They clung to.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Hope for weeks, but when it eventually became clear that
Theodosia was gone, they were both broken men. Joseph Alston
completed his term as governor in eighteen fourteen, after weathering
a number of scandals and blackmail attempts related to that
Mexico invasion plot, which he had contributed money to. He
died on September tenth, eighteen sixteen, at the age of
(23:44):
thirty seven. Aaron Burr died twenty years later, and in
the years after Theodosia's disappearance, he had put everything that
reminded him of her out of sight. Speculation about what
happened started immediately after the disappearance of the Patriot, and
it cantinued for decades. To quote a New York Times
piece written for the one hundredth anniversary of the disappearance,
(24:08):
summing up what all that speculation had been for all
those decades, Quote, what happened to Theodosia Burr Alston, the
beautiful daughter of Aaron Burr, vice President of the United
States and the reigning bell of diplomatic society? Was she
shipwrecked in a storm at sea. Was she kidnapped by pirates?
Was she forced to walk the plank into the ocean?
Was she held a prisoner? Was she abandoned on an island?
(24:30):
Was she the ill fated victim of her father's political enemies?
Was her life the absolution which washed the stain of
Alexander Hamilton's blood from her father's hands. The only thing
that we know for sure is that they were not
stopped by the British Navy. In nineteen ninety eight, James L.
Mitchie scoured the logs of all British ships that had
(24:51):
been patrolling off the Carolina coast, and none of them
had any record of an encounter with the Patriot.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
There are naturally a slew of eerie and sometimes Macob's
story is about what happened to the Patriot and everyone aboard,
and some of them emerged while Theodosia's husband and father
were still alive. Theodosia's best friend, Natalie, had a series
of premonitions that made her fear for Theodosia's life in
October of eighteen thirteen, So this was well after the
(25:19):
Patriots set sail, but before she had heard anything about
what had happened. She ended a letter to a friend quote,
I think she must be dead.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
A series of pirates also gave multiple contradictory deathbed confessions
about having captured the Patriot and killed everyone aboard, including Theodosia.
A June twenty third, eighteen twenty article and The Mercantile
Advisor reported that Jean Defarge and Robert Johnson, privateers aboard
the Patriot, had confessed to taking over the ship two
(25:52):
or three days into the journey, trapping everyone in the hold,
stealing all of the valuables, and sinking the boat on
their way out. Although they were tried, convicted, and executed
for this crime, they also said the Patriot left from
Charleston when it really left from Georgetown, and they also
said that the weather had been good the whole time,
So there were a lot of contradictions in their account.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
It seems maybe weird that somebody would make up a
confession to a crime that would get them executed, but
like they were on trial for other stuff as well,
So if this is a whole made up story, it
was made up to bring them personal infamy because they
already knew that regardless of what all they testified to
they were going to be executed. Another confession made by
(26:36):
James Burdick, who was known as Old Frank, was reported
from Michigan in eighteen fifty. He had made an agreement
with some neighbors that they could have his house after
he died if they looked after him in his old age.
So in his final years, as they were taking care
of him, he told them all kinds of stories about
his time as a pirate, including that he had captured
(26:57):
the Patriot and given Theodosia a choice of becoming concubine
or walking the plank. According to Verdic, she chose the latter, saying,
quote vengeance's mind saith the Lord, I will repay on
her way down. There's no substantiation on this story, and
walking the plank is also way more associated with sensational
(27:17):
fiction than with anything actual pirates did. Plus, as we've
said before, Theodosia was not really a religious woman. This
I captured the Patriot and made Theodosia walk the plank
story became a common theme, appearing not only in the
deathbed confessions of other purported pirates, but also the plot
of several sensational novels.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Not every novel ended with a plank walk though.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
In Blenner Hassett or The Decrees of Fate, a romance
founded upon events in American History, which was a book
published in nineteen oh one, the pirate captain falls in
love with Theodosia and she is accidentally shot by someone.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
In the navy who was aiming for him. Yeah, the guy.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Who wrote this book wrote another book that was also
a fictionalization of her life, and he used all his
research for this to make one of the to write
one of the first biographies of her, which you can
find on the internet at archive dot org.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
It'll be linked in the show notes.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
But in a way it's frustrating to read because it
has chapters and chapters and chapters that are about her
ancestors before it actually gets to her, and then it's
very clear that there is some bias involved and how
he tells the story of her life. Anyway, outside the
world of piracy, we're leaving pirates behind. There is a
(28:37):
grave at Saint Paul's Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia that
is known as the Grave of the Female Stranger. So,
according to the lore, a man and a woman arrived
in Alexandria in eighteen sixteen, and the woman was very sick.
When a doctor was summoned, the couple would permit no
questions about who they were. The woman died on October
(28:59):
fourteenth of eighteen sixteen, and was buried in a grave
under an inscription that begins quote to the memory of
a female stranger whose mortal sufferings terminated on the fourteenth
day of October eighteen sixteen, aged twenty three years and
eight months. One theory, even though this was a couple
of years after she disappeared, and she would have been
(29:20):
older than twenty three, as at the identity of the
woman buried in this grave as Theodosia Burr Alston.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Fifty seven years after the disappearance of the Patriot, a
doctor named W. G. Poole was summaring at Nagshead, North Carolina,
when he was called on to see an elderly woman
known as Missus Mann. As a gesture of thanks and
in lieu of cash payment, she gave him an oil
portrait of a lady which he had admired. While he
(29:48):
was attending to her in her home.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Doctor Poole tried to get Missus Mann to tell him
where this picture had come from, and she finally told
him that her husband had been a wrecker, basically somebody
who made a living by salvaging wrecked ships off of
the outer banks, and sometimes these outer banks wreckers are
known as bankers.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
He and some.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Others had found a ship completely abandoned, and in some
versions of the story nothing seemed to miss and a
meal was even laid out on the table, and other
accounts everything was in disarray. But regardless, this painting was
purportedly from one of the cabins on the boat, which
clearly belonged to a woman. Somebody eventually suggested that this
(30:29):
painting was off Theodosia Burr Alston.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
It's hard to determine whether this painting, known as the
Nag's Head Portrait, really is Theodosia. The two authenticated portraits
of her don't look anything alike, and the Nag's Head
portrait doesn't look like either of them either. Members of
the Burr family insisted that it was her, but several
of the Alstons disagreed.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
At this point, it's not really possible to determine if
this is really a painting of Theodosia burr Alston. But
it's one of the most talked about theories for not
even really a theory for her disappearance, like if she
did if she was on the boat and that was
a picture of her, that part makes sense because maybe
she was carrying this painting of herself to her father,
who was she was going to visit. But it raises
(31:13):
lots of questions about when she would have sat for
the painting, and then of course what happened to everyone
on the boat when they either abandoned it or were
taken off of it, leaving the painting behind. We're going
to end on what's probably the creepiest story and also
the most recent. Ja Elliott of Norfolk, Virginia reported a
story in nineteen ten that he had heard earlier from
(31:35):
people living in the area. A woman's body in fine
clothing had washed up on the coast in January of
eighteen thirteen, and then a gentleman who found the body
had buried it on his farm, but before doing so,
he had cut three of its fingers off so he
could remove rings that she was wearing. When he later
(31:55):
had a daughter, she was born with the same three
fingers missing. It said that the reason that it was
almost one hundred years before anybody had suggested that maybe
this was Theodosia was that nobody had written the area
knew about Theodosia's disappearance, but as soon as he heard
about it, he made that connection. So there's most of
the weird theories about what maybe happened. The most logical
(32:17):
theory is probably that the boat sank in a storm
like that seems like the most straightforward one, but having
so many weird stories about other people's claiming that they
captured it to spirates or that they they saw her
somewhere afterwards. Like, there's a bunch of other weird rumors
that we didn't really get it to of, like, oh,
I definitely saw her somewhere.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
She was definitely alive.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
There's that way that when any mystery exists in the
public consciousness, people step in to fill in the blanks,
even when those are not accurate at all.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Yeah, well, this.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Was all over newspapers, and I read a whole bunch
of things from like one hundred year old copies of
like the New York Times in the Boston Globe, obviously
scanned and on the internet. I didn't go dig them
physically up, but they're kept being all these reports about her,
like she really was a famous person when she died,
(33:13):
although at that point, like her association with her father's
killing of Alexander Hamilton and weird scheme to take over
his own personal empire like that had people didn't have
maybe quite as much of a glowing perception of her.
But she and her husband were definitely famous figures when
she vanished, and the story of her disappearance was just
(33:35):
this huge source for rumors and gossip for decades after
it happened. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday.
If you'd like to send us a note, our email
addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can
(33:57):
subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. MHM
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