Last Year's Lesson: Theodosia Burr Alston Disappeared - Dec. 31, 1812

The ship carrying Theodosia Burr Alston disappeared on this day in 1812. There's more to the story in the October 17, 2017 episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, history fans, here's a rerun for today, brought to
you by Tracy V. Wilson. Welcome to this Day in
History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com and from
the desk of Stuff you Missed in History Class. It's
the show where we explore the past one day at
a time with a quick look at what happened today
in history. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson,

(00:25):
and it's December thirty one. Theodosia Burr Alston disappeared on
this day in eighteen twelve. Of course, she was the
daughter of Aaron Burr and Theodosja Bartow. When they met,
the elder Theodosia was already married. Theodosia and Aaron Burr
got married in sight two after the death of her
first husband, and they had a daughter, the subject of

(00:46):
this episode on June. The young Theodosia had very ambitious parents.
Her parents focused their ambitions on her. This is especially
true of her father, he wanted to groom her to
be an outstanding lady. Consequently, she was very highly educated,

(01:06):
possibly the most educated woman of her time, and she
was widely regarded as a child prodigy. When she was
only ten, though the young Theodosia's mother died was probably
of stomach cancer, and in spite of her very young age,
Theodosia sort of taking on more and more of the
work that had been her mother's. She was managing their
household and the enslaved staff. She was acting as hostess

(01:29):
for her father's gatherings. She really was the mistress of
their house by her early teens. In eighteen hundred, two
things happened that would really change her life. One was
that there was an incredibly convoluted presidential election and Theodosia's father,
Aaron Burr, ultimately became the vice president. The other big

(01:49):
change was that she met a man named Joseph Alston
of South Carolina. He was a wealthy educated planter and
he had practiced law before. During his attentions to agriculture,
he had a rice plantation that had more than six
thousand acres and a staff of more than two hundred
enslaved Africans. He had to work really hard to convince

(02:10):
her to marry him, though she was attracted to him,
but she thought they were way too young to get married.
Once they did get married, though, they went on a
lengthy bridal tour, and then they had a son around
May eighteen o two. During the delivery, Theodosia experienced a
very severe uterine pro lapse and that negatively affected her
health for the rest of her life. She was exhausted

(02:34):
and traumatized after giving birth to her son, and in
a lot of ways, she felt incredibly isolated in South Carolina.
Being on a plantation with such a huge enslaved staff
was a very different experience for her than what she
had been used to in her father's houses. So just
three weeks after giving birth, even though she was definitely
still recovering, she went to visit her father, and these

(02:55):
visits back home became an annual tradition. But on July eleventh,
eighteen o four, when Theodosia was twenty one, her father
shot and killed Alexander Hamilton's in a duel. He was
arrested for treason, tried and acquitted, but he fled to
Europe to try to escape the scandal. Theodosia had kept
trying to get permission for her father to come back

(03:16):
to the United States, but that didn't happen until eighteen twelve,
and then, unfortunately, they did not have a happy reunion.
Her son, who was also named Aaron, died just a
couple of months after arin Burg got back to the
United States. She was absolutely traumatized and devastated, and her
only consolation was getting home to her father. But the

(03:39):
war of eighteen twelve was going on. Theodosia's husband had
been elected governor of South Carolina and was Brigadier general
of the state militia, so there was no way that
he could leave his duties and accompany her on a
trip to go see her father. An overland voyage would
have been probably safer in some ways, but very long
and uncomfortable, especially for somebody with her medical history. The

(04:02):
only way that was reasonable for her to get to
her father was by sea. That was a trip that
would take less than a week, but it was an
already uncertain means of travel through an active war zone
that was also full of pirates. In spite of all
that she was set on going, her husband didn't have
the heart to try to keep her at home, and

(04:22):
she departed from Georgetown, South Carolina, aboard a small pilot
boat called the Patriot on December thirty first, eighteen twelve.
She also had a lot of her father's papers with
her to return to him, and Dr Timothy Ruggles Green
on board with her to take care of her because
of her illness. She probably had a maid and maybe
a cook with her as well. Her husband boarded the

(04:43):
ship with her and then rode back to shore after
kissing her goodbye, and then once the Patriots slipped out
of view from the shore, it was never seen again.
Her father and her husband held out hope for weeks
that maybe she had just been delayed somehow, but they
were never reunited, and they eventually accepted she had died.
There are, though, theories that continue to persist about what

(05:05):
really happened. You can learn more about this, including more
about those theories, in the October eight episode of Stuffy
Miss in History Class. Thanks to Casey Pegram and Chandler
Maze for their audio work on this show. You can
subscribe to The Stand History Class on Apple podcast, Google podcast,
I Heart Radio app, and wherever else you get your podcasts,
and you can tune in tomorrow for the birth of

(05:26):
one of history's most famous patrons.