If you ’re a fan of the musical " Hamilton , " you undoubtedly remember a birdcall in Act I title " Dear Theodosia , " in whichAaron Burr , Alexander Hamilton ’s rival and eventual slayer , professes his love for his young daughter :
That girl , Theodosia Burr Alston , never in reality appears in the musical , and she is n’t remark when Burr laments what he figure as his ignominious place in chronicle — " I survived , but I paid for it " — after fatally shooting Hamilton in aJuly 1804 duelnear the close of Act II .
Theodosia Burr Disappears
But Burr would suffer a pain in the ass worse than shame . On Dec. 31 , 1812 , a lilliputian more than eight years after the fatal duel , the 29 - year - old Theodosia boarded a schooner , the Patriot , in Georgetown , South Carolina , for a trip north to visit her father in New York City . But the Patriot never arrived . Instead , it disappeared somewhere along the Atlantic coast , and Theodosia was never seen again . The brutal mystery of her fate would torment Aaron Burr until his own decease in 1836 .
" For the rest of his life , only the break up - hearted shell of Aaron Burr walked the street of New York , " the late source and publisherRichard N. Cotewrote in his 2002 life story , " Theodosia Burr Alston : portrayal of a Prodigy . "
More than two C later , Theodosia ’s fate remain nameless . Did the minor ship on which she was a rider sink in a violent storm ? Was the ship conquer by pirate ship who forced Theodosia and the other passengers to take the air the plank ? Or did it fall victim to the infamous " tow car " of North Carolina ’s Outer Banks , who marry lanterns to pony on the shore to flim-flam ship captains into convert course so they would run aground ? While most historians who ’ve written about Theodosia seem to jibe that a storm was the most likely causal agent of her disappearance , darker suspiciousness have lollygag , driven in part by ex - pirates who claim to know about her demise .
Adding to the enigma is apainting of a woman , by one account found in an give up ship that blow into the H2O off Nags Head , North Carolina , as this1894 newspaper storydetails . Many believe the painting , which is now part of the solicitation atYale University ’s Lewis Walpole Library , to be a portrait of Theodosia .
" I think there ’s still interest in it , because it ’s an unresolved mystery , " explainedFaye Jensen , a historian , archivist and chief executive officer of theSouth Carolina Historical Society , who wrote this2021 blog poston Theodosia ’s unresolved circumstances .
" And apparently there were confessions by plagiariser . With that sort of matter , you do n’t know if it ’s legitimate or not , but it certainly adds to the mystique , " Jensen said . " Add to that the portrait . Anytime you have one picayune artifact that will allow for a cue , you ’re choke to bestow a caboodle of speculation about how something come about , if you do n’t have the facts . I cerebrate the portrait really encouraged a tidy sum of people to add up up with ideas about what happened . "
Who Was Theodosia Burr?
The disappearance was a strange and perturbing ending for the life of one of the best - school American woman of her time . Theodosia was deport June 21 , 1783 , and named at Burr ’s imperativeness after his wife Theodosia Bartow Burr , the widow of a British military officer , according to Burr biographer Nancy Isenberg in " precipitate Founder : The Life of Aaron Burr . " Theodosia was the only one of Burr ’s three children from his union to survived to adulthood . ( He didfather two other shaver , Louisa Charlotte and John Pierre , in an extramarital kinship with Mary Emmons , an Native American - Haitian immigrant who shape for him . Both eventually married and had families , and both became involved in the abolitionist movement . )
" Burr was quite connected to his girl and has passably reform-minded views about women ’s education,“John Vile , prof of political science atMiddle Tennessee State University , explains in an email . Though Burr was self - pore , reckless , self-important and sexually light , by most accounts he was a devoted Father of the Church to Theodosia .
Burr trust that women were the intellectual match of serviceman — his own wife was a voracious reader of Greek classics and Edward Gibbons ' multi - volume " History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , " according to Isenberg ’s volume — and he and his wife made sure that Theodosia got an education as ok as any upper - family male child . She was bright enough to take reward of the chance . As James Parton wrote in his 1893 biography , " The Life and Times of Aaron Burr , " by age 10 , " she was readingHoraceandTerencein the original Latin , discover the Hellenic grammar , speaking French , studyingGibbon , use on the piano , taking lesson in saltation , and learning to skate . "
Theodosia ’s brilliance might have prepared her well for a career in law or politics , but neither way was usable to a woman of her clock time . alternatively , like her female parent , she became the wife of a muscular man . In 1801 , the same year that her Church Father became vice - president afternarrowly drop off the presidentship to Thomas Jefferson , Theodosia marriedJoseph Alston , the scion of a moneyed Timothy Miles Bindon Rice plantation family in South Carolina .
Theodosia ’s husband became a extremity of the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1802 , the same year that the twosome ’s son , Aaron Burr Alston was born . From 1805 to 1809 , Theodosia ’s husband served as speaker of the household , the new human ever to take hold that perspective . A reform - minded politician who opposed reopening the slave trade and wanted to make the body politic ’s wicked criminal laws more humanistic , he seemed like a leader with a bright future .
Hamilton and Aaron Burr
Around this fourth dimension , the political luck of Theodosia ’s father began to sink . Congress passed the12th Amendment , dumping the original system in which the runner - up in the Electoral College became vice president , and replacing it with one in which presidential and vice - presidential candidates ran on one party slate .
Since Jefferson did n’t like Aaron Burr , there was n’t much likelihood that Jefferson would pick him as his running mate . Burr wanted to become governor of New York , but Hamilton worked to crush Burr ’s dream .
After Burr killed Hamilton in the affaire d’honneur , Burr wascharged with murderin both New Jersey and New York , though he was never really arrested or tried . alternatively , in 1805 , he left office in disgrace . Burr blackened his report even more by becoming need in a bizarre scheme to apply a secret army to steal Texas from Mexico and New Orleans from the U.S.-controlled Louisiana Territory and form a new nation . That led to Burr beingtried for betrayal in 1807 . Though he was acquitted , he was such a pariah that he act for a time to England before returning to New York in May 1812 .
Meanwhile , Theodosia ’s life took a routine for the bad as well . Her son died at age 10 in the summer of 1812 from malaria , leaving her in despair . She herself was ill , probably with uterine cancer , according to her biographer Cote , who compiled the most detailed news report of Theodosia ’s life . After her married man won a close election for governor of South Carolina in former December , she yearn to see her father again .
The trip probably was n’t a good theme . As Cote wrote , Thodosia ’s health made traveling by handler difficult , and the family coachman was an undependable drunkard . With theWar of 1812raging , sail to New York think mother past British warships that were conquer American vessels , as well as plagiarizer and North Carolina ’s wrecker . The winter atmospheric condition along the southern Atlantic coast often was perilous as well . To make thing even more complicated , Alston , who also serve as a brigadier general in the militia that defended South Carolina , could n’t leave the land to accompany her .
Even so , Alston knew that his married woman urgently needed to see her father , so he reluctantly agreed to allow her voyage to New York . Burr win over an old friend who was a physician , Dr. Timothy Ruggles Greene , to travel by land down to South Carolina and escort his daughter . Alston arranged for them to travel on the Patriot , a little ship that was sufficiently fleet that it had seen service as a privateer , though its cannons had been removed and stow below pack of cards and concealed behind barrels of Sir Tim Rice , so that it could pass as a civilian ship , according to Cote ’s book .
The Last Time Anyone Ever Saw Theodosia Burr
At about noon on New Year ’s Eve 1812 , Theodosia , her husband , her maid and Dr. Greene got into a small boat and were rowed to the Patriot , which was anchored in the waters of Winyah Bay , off the port of Georgetown , South Carolina , according to Cote ’s score . Joseph Alston said bye-bye to his wife , and soon afterward , the Patriot ’s captain , William Overstocks , give the order to pull up the mainstay and hoist the sails . The trip should have taken five or six days . In his possession , the sea captain had a letter from Alston , address to the admiral of the British fleet , in which he asked for his married woman ’s safe passage because of her unwellness .
That was the last that anyone ascertain of the Patriot or Theodosia . After a few weeks , Alston pen to Aaron Burr in desperation . Burr himself rove the New York waterfront , seek for news show that might allow him to cohere to Bob Hope , concord to H.W. Brands ' biography , " The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr . " He expect for a letter of the alphabet from kidnappers seek a ransom , or from the British Navy . But there was nothing .
Aaron Burr believably was tormented by thinking of the various dreaded lot that might been suffer by Theodosia . Eventually , he apparently accepted the least disturbing of the big possibilities — that she had been lost at ocean .
But even before Burr ’s death in 1836 , other rumor about what had happened to Theodosia continued to go around .
As this 2019articlefrom the Library of Congress web site details , several elderly or imprisoned sea robber confessed to having been involve in the plundering and sinking of the Patriot . ( Here ’s an1820 newsprint articleabout two condemned men who claim to have been involved in the Patriot ’s capture . ) One who surfaced in 1833 even described how he had storm Theodosia to walk the board . And in the mid-1870s , a 90 - twelvemonth - old man who called himself Jean Baptiste Castro , and claimed to have been a gunner on the Vengeance , the ship of famous pirateJean Lafitte , claim that Theodosia had become Lafitte ’s captive , only to be pop by another pirate after resisting his sexual progression . The story is detail in this1875 articlefrom a New Orleans newspaper on the Library of Congress internet site .
It ’s potential we will never know the trueness about the disappearance of Theodosia Burr Alston , but the speculation will certainly go along .
