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