October 18, 2017 • 36 mins
Aaron Burr's daughter was incredibly smart and very well educated. She also vanished without a trace as an adult, and her ultimate fate is still a matter of debate.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I am Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. I
have a slight cold voice today, so apologies that side
of the episode for that. Yeah, we both caught some
(00:24):
crab while we were in New York. Yep, souh that
apology aside. The last time we mentioned Hamilton's 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 are doing. She's a
(00:44):
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, 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 maccab
(01:05):
hooray maccob. It's almost impossible to separate Theodosia Burr Alston's
life from her parents, Erin Burr and Theodosja bartow and
when they met the elder. Theodosia was married to Jacques
Marcus Provo or Provost, depending on how you pronounce it
if you're French or American. He is also sometimes known
as James Mark Provost, who was an officer in the
(01:27):
British Army. Jacques and Theodosia had five children together, three
daughters and two sons, none of whom are the subject
of this episode. They all lived on a two 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,
(01:50):
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, 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
(02:13):
she was entertaining a lot of their most prominent military
and political leaders there, but somehow she managed to 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 Lawrens, Alexander Hamilton's
(02:35):
Charles Lee, James Monroe, and George Washington himself. Basically the elder.
Theodosia was hosting the entire cast of Hamilton's at the estate,
and of course there was her future husband, Aaron Burr,
who Theodosia met at the at the Hermitage while her
husband was stationed in Jamaica. Aaron Burr was a notorious philanderer,
(02:57):
but the first time he saw Theodosia, he was totally
convinced that she was, to use a slightly more recent term,
his soul mate. 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
(03:18):
forces there, he was installed as Lieutenant governor under the
British government. That delicate line 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
husband was no longer just an officer in the British Army.
He was a prominent part of the British government in
(03:41):
North America. 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. Theodosia did eventually leave the Hermitage because the
war in area became way supercarious for her to be
(04:02):
safe there, but the organized effort to force her off
the property was ultimately dropped. 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 Provost.
As long as he was stationed anywhere nearby, he visited
(04:25):
her as often as he could. In seventeen seventy nine,
at the age of twenty three. 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.
In December of see, Theodosia Provost learned that her first
(04:49):
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 to the
New York Bar, which he earned on April seventeenth, seventeen
eighty two, and then on July two of that year,
(05:12):
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,
and their early marriage was, by all accounts, a very
happy one. Theodosia was extremely intelligent, she was very well read,
(05:33):
and she and her husband shared a keen interest in
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 addition to the part where he had visited so
much before her husband died, she wasn't wealthy, and she
also was not considered to be particularly attractive, and it
(05:55):
was assumed that Aaron Burr would marry someone rich or
beautiful or both. They made their al Mauny residents into
a place that was home to French literature and fine art,
and on June twenty one, seventeen eighty three, their daughter,
who was christened Theodosia Barto Burr the following July, they
nicknamed her Miss PRIs, and in their letters to each
(06:16):
other and eventually to her, they called her Theo. Although
the Birds occupied a prominent place in Albany society and
his law practice was successful, erin Burn wanted to pursue
even greater opportunities. He was, as was the case through
much of his life, short on liquid funds, so he
borrowed money from an uncle to relocate the family to
(06:38):
New York City. 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 altogether. By sevent Her two
half brothers were already old enough to work as clerks
(06:59):
and their father's law office by the time that she
was born. They both had to swear allegiance to the
United States that they had been sent to fight with
the British when they were little. Her sister, Sally, was
born on June five, but she died at the age
of only three, and the younger Theodosia also had two
brothers who were both stillborn. So it was really Theodosia
(07:20):
who Aaron Burr started grooming for some future greatness as
part of his own personal legacy, And we're gonna talk
about how he did that, but first we're gonna pause
for a quick little sponsor break. Both of her parents
absolutely adored the young Theodosia Burr, and they raised her
(07:43):
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 her in education that
would have been expected for a young man from a
prominent family, but it really goes way farther than that.
(08:06):
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,
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,
(08:28):
something people were still commenting on the oddity of one
years later. Theodosia was a brilliant student even as a
young child. She was writing her father letters by 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,
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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 History and Decline and
fall of the Roman Empire. She was widely regarded as
a prodigy. Mary wolston Crafts of Vindication of the Rights
of Woman is often credited as having inspired Aaron Burr
(09:13):
to secure this education for his daughter, and he definitely
did read that work in after which he called it
a work of genius. But 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. What
a Vindication of the Rights of Woman did do was
(09:34):
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 Wolston Craft's work, especially as it related
to the education of girls and young women. He imagined
that Theodosia could provide a living example that girls could
(09:54):
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. This
wasn't without its problems. Aaron Burr spent as much time
(10:16):
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 turn
for 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 and educational plans that
he had created. So just overseeing her daughter's education might
(10:38):
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 interested with carrying out various business matters
on her husband's behalf. At the same time, her health
had already been really poor even before her second marriage.
(11:00):
Towards the end of seventeen, the Elder Theodosia's health really
started to fail, and she was given a wide range
of treatments, from hemlock to laudanum two wine to mercury,
and none of this worked, and she died at home
on May eighteenth sevent The actual cause of death was
most likely stomach cancer. The young Theodosia was only ten
(11:24):
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. The Birds had multiple residences
(11:46):
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 we're speaking of, and enslave staff of approximately ten
people saw to a day to day care and management
of the property, including cook's maids, coachman, a valet, and
a doorman. By her early teens, Theodosia was officially the
(12:10):
mistress of the house, and by running the household and
acting as hostess, Theodosia meant and interacted with an incredibly
posh list of guests, 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,
(12:30):
she acquired a new teacher from France known as Madame
de Senat, who was governess to Natalie Delage Devolude. The
two of them, along with Senat's own daughter, had fled
the French Revolution, and upon arriving in New York, Madame
de Senat had set to work establishing a school to
cater to the children of prominent families. There she lived
and worked from her residence that burr also used as
(12:52):
an office, and Natalie and Theodosia, who were about the
same age, became best friends. In eighteen hundred, two days
happened that would radically change Theodosious life. One was an
incredibly convoluted presidential election, which would ultimately wind up with
her father becoming the third vice President of the United States.
(13:13):
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 Wakama River covered more than six thousand acres, which
were worked by more than two hundred enslaved Africans. Theodosia
(13:34):
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 to
(13:56):
convince her that it was the best thing to do,
along with easing her concern about what life would be
like is 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
(14:18):
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 both. Theodosia finally agreed with him, and
they got married in Albany on February second of eighteen
o one. In spite of her youth, Theodosia was probably
(14:40):
the most educated woman in the United States at the time.
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 joe
to Alston as charged Affair to the U S Minister
(15:03):
to France, imagining that Theodosia might continue her education there,
but Joseph decided to stick with his plantation. We will
get to Theodosia's married life and her eventual disappearance. After
another quick sponsor break in one, Theodosia and Joseph departed
(15:25):
on a bridal tour, simultaneously starting a trend by being
the first prominent couple to visit 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
of eighteen o two. His grandfather wanted so badly to
be present for the birth of his grandson that he
actually left the capital while Congress was still in sessions
(15:47):
so he could get there in time. The young Arid's
birth was long and difficult, and the delivery caused a
uterine pro lapse. A minor pro lapse 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
(16:09):
her unable to have any more children and lead to
recurring infections. Since there was no reliable way to 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
(16:31):
when she wrote to a doctor to describe what was
happening to her, she did it all in 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, which became an
annual event. 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
(16:55):
a whole deeply religious, and Theodosia was not. She was
also just not what an one expected of a planter's wife.
Although Charleston's society might have been more welcoming of an
exceptionally educated woman, a swampy rice plantation on the Wakama
River was far far from there. Plus, although Aaron Burr
enslaved people at his New York estates, and Theodosia had
(17:18):
been responsible in some to some extent, and 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 Emancipation Act,
which went into effect in seventeen So people who owned
lots of slaves not necessarily the biggest fan of Aaron
Burr and his politics. But as Joseph's wife, it was
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Theodosia'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 dinners and soirees for presidents and
diplomats that had not meant things like distribut eating annual
(18:00):
cloth and allotments to hundreds of enslaved people. Theodosia and
her husband definitely missed each other and these annual stretches
of months and months when she was away, but South
Carolina just did not feel like home to her. In
New York did. Then, on July eleven, eighteen o four,
when she was twenty woman, Theodosia's father shot Alexander Hamilton's
(18:23):
in a duel in Hamilton's 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 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's knew he was committing incest with
(18:46):
Theodosia and had been spreading that around. But this really
comes from Gorvidal's ninety three novel Burr and his logic
as a writer was basically that it was the one
thing he could think of that would make Aaron Burr
angry enough to kill Alexander Hamilton's. There's really no evidence
that there was physical ancest going on, but it is
absolutely true that Burr's relationship with his daughter did not
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have anything like what we would call healthy emotional boundaries
today at all, Like she became a definitely became an
emotional surrogate for her mother after her mother's death, and
their relationship was intense in a way that would not
strike people as normal. The duel with Alexander Hamilton's was
(19:29):
not Ver's only crime. He also embarked on a weird
scheme to invade Mexico, separate off the western part of
the U S territory, and succeeed, setting all of that
up as his personal empire, with Theodosia succeeding him as
empress after his death. There's a whole episode about that
in the archive as well, and that is actually going
to be our Saturday Classic this week. Yeah, that seems
(19:52):
like a bizarre story to bring up and not really
get into it, but this episode is not about Airin Burr,
so we will leave that to past hosts to cover
on Saturday. Long story short, Aaron Burr was arrested for
treason on February oh seven, and he faced trial in Richmond, Virginia.
In spite of her health, Theodosia and her husband traveled
(20:13):
there to be with him throughout the proceedings. Even though
he was acquitted on September one, his reputation was ruined
and he became the target of public outrage, even more
than he already had for killing Alexander Hamilton's. Theodosia's reputation
was tarnished by association as well. Erin Burr fled to Europe,
(20:34):
hoping to make a brief escape while the outrage blew over,
but when he tried to return, he was refused a
passport and he was barred from re entering the country
for more than four years. Theodosio 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
(20:57):
May fourth. His homecoming was soon marred by tragedy. Aaron
Burr Alston died on June 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 with the idea of being
reunited with her father. Of course, this was during the
(21:20):
War of eighteen twelve. Theodosia's husband had been elected governor
of South Carolina and was Brigadier General of the state militia,
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
(21:40):
would take less than a week, but it was an
already uncertain means of travel through an active war zone
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,
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aboard a small pilot boat called the Patriot, on December twelve.
Some accounts less this is thet Dr. 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
(22:22):
to shore alone. Once the Patriots slipped out of you,
it was never seen again. 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
(22:42):
weather in Georgetown when the ships set sail, a heavy
storm had struck the coast of North Carolina not long
after she left. They clung to 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
(23:03):
and blackmail attempts related to that Mexico invasion plot, which
he had contributed money to. He died on September sixteen,
at the age of thirty seven. Aarin Bird 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
(23:27):
the Patriot, and it continued to for decades. To Quote
a New York Times piece written for the hundredth anniversary
of the disappearance, summing up what all that speculation had
been for all those decades, quote what happened to Theodosia
Burr Austin, the beautiful daughter of Aaron Burr, Vice President
of the United States and the reigning bell of diplomatic society?
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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? 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
(24:12):
is that they were not stopped by the British Navy.
In James L. Mitchie scoured the logs of all British
ships that had been patrolling off the Carolina coast, and
none of them had any record of an encounter with
the Patriot. There are naturally a slew of erie and
sometimes Macab's stories about what happened to the Patriot and
(24:32):
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 Patriots set sail, but before she had heard
anything about what had happened. She ended a letter to
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a friend quote, I think she must be dead. A
series of pirates all so gave multiple contradictory deathbed confessions
about having captured the Patriot and killed everyone aboard, including Theodosia.
A June article and the Mercantile Adviser reported that Jean
(25:14):
Defarge and Robert Johnson, privateers aboard the Patriot, had confessed
to taking over the ship two 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
(25:35):
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. 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
(25:58):
regardless of of what all they testified to, they were
they were going to be executed. Another confession made by
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
(26:19):
of him, he told them all kinds of stories about
his time as a pirate, including that he had captured
the Patriot and given Theodosia a choice of becoming his
concubine or walking the plank. According to Burdick, she chose
the latter, saying, quote vengeance's mind saith the Lord, I
will repay on her way down. There's no substantiation on
(26:41):
This story and walking the plank is also way more
associated with sensational 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 see, appearing not only in the
(27:01):
deathbed confessions of other purported pirates, but also the plot
of several sensational novels. Not every novel ended with a
plank walk, though. In Blenner Hasset or The Decrease of Fate,
a romance founded upon events in American History, which was
a book published in ninet one, the pirate captain falls
in love with Theodosia and she is accidentally shot by
(27:23):
someone in the navy who was aiming for him. Yeah,
the the guy 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 UH on the internet
at like archive dot org. It will be linked in
(27:44):
the shares. But in a way it's it's frustrating to
read because it has chapters and chapters and chapters that
are about her, her ancestors before it actually gets to her.
And then it's it's very clear that there is some
bias involved in how he tells the story of her life. Anyway,
outside the world of piracy, we're leaving pirates behind. There
(28:06):
is a grave at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Alexandria,
Virginia that is known as the Grave of the Female Stranger.
So according to the Lord, 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
(28:27):
on October fourteenth of eighteen sixteen and was buried in
a grave under an 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
(28:49):
would have been older than twenty three, is that the
identity of the woman buried in this grave as Theodosja
Burr Austin fifty seven years after the disappearance of the Patriot,
a doctor named W. G. Pool was submarine at Bang's Head,
North Carolina, when he was called on to see an
elderly woman known as Mrs Mann. As a gesture of
(29:10):
thanks and in lieu of cash payment, she gave him
an oil portrait of a lady which he had admired
while he was attending to her in her home. Dr
Pool tried to get Mrs Man 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
(29:34):
as bankers. He and some 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.
(29:56):
Somebody eventually suggested that this painting was of theodo Ja
Burrow Alston. It's hard to determine whether this painting. Notice
the nag's head portrait really is the Adosia. 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,
(30:17):
but several of the Alston's disagreed. At this point, it's
not really possible to determine if this is really a
painting of the Photoship Burr Alston, but it's it's one
of the most talked about theories for not not even
really a theory for her disappearance, like if she did
if if she was on the boat and that was
a picture of her, that part makes sense because maybe
(30:37):
she was carrying this painting of herself to her father,
who was she was going to visit, But it raises
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. J. A. Eliott of Norfolk, Virginia reported
(31:00):
a story in nineteen ten that he had heard earlier
from 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
(31:24):
had a daughter, she was born with the same three
fingers missing. Elliott said that the reason that it was
almost a 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. It's supposed to the
weird theories about what maybe happened. The most logical theory
(31:47):
is probably that the boat sank in a storm like that,
it seems like the most straightforward one, but having so
many weird stories about other people's claiming that they captured
at aspirates or that they they saw her somewhere afterwards,
Like there's a bunch of other weird rumors that we
didn't really get it too of, Like, oh, I definitely
saw her where she was definitely alive. There's that way
(32:11):
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. Yeah, well this was all
over newspapers, and I I read a whole bunch of
things from like a hundred year old copies of like
the New York Times, in the Boston Globe, obviously scanning
(32:31):
on the internet. I didn't go dig them physically up,
but uh, they're kept being all these reports about her,
like she really was a famous person when she died,
although at that point, like her association with her father's
killing of Alexander Hamilton's and weird scheme to take over
his own personal empire like that had, people didn't have
(32:52):
maybe quite as much of a glowing perception of her.
But she and her husband were definitely famous figures when
you vanished, and the the story of her disappearance was
just this huge source for rumors and and gossip for
for decades after it happened. Do you have a little
(33:13):
bit of uh, gossipy or no listener mail? While I
do have actual physical mail this time, I not not
really gossipy. New but I was in our Atlanta office
not long ago, which gave me the rare opportunity to
be the person to open some of our mail. And
so I have a couple of people to thank for
things that they sent our way. The first is Rashaan.
(33:36):
Rashan wrote to us from Virginia and talked about Virginia
having a large tourism campaign with that slogan Virginia is
for lovers, and eventually they made sort of specialized stickers
to be handed out at particular places, So at King's Dominion,
which is a theme park, they had Virginia is for
thrill lovers. And as some of the local breweries there's,
(33:57):
Virginia is for beer lovers. So he sent us Virginia
is for lovers stickers as well as Virginia is for
history lovers stickers. So thank you so much, Rashawn for
sending that our way. Um. I also have a really
lovely letter from Meg, and Meg sent us a letter
where she apologizes for her penmanship, which is unnecessary because
(34:21):
it's so much better than my penmanship. But she wrote
about our are sewing machine episode, and she drew on
the letter little spools of thread and a needle and stitches,
and it's just really lovely and charming. Um. And she
talks about being really tickled with the episode about sewing
machines because she found so many relatable tidbits in it.
(34:44):
Um And she also sent us some NASA bookmarks and
stickers from having volunteered with them at one of the
official eclipse viewing sites in Charleston, South Carolina. So thank
you so so much, too, Meg for sending that our way,
and too Rashawn for sending us stickers from Virginia. If
(35:04):
you would like to write to us about this or
any other podcast or a history podcasts at how stuff
Works dot com. We're also on Facebook and Twitter and
Pinterest and everything. All of our social media is at
Missed in History, so you can follow us there to
see updates about the show. On Facebook and Twitter, we
do lots of this Day in History posts of previous
episodes that have something that occurred that particular day in history,
(35:27):
so you can come to our website, which is Missed
in History dot com find us searchable archive of every
episode that we've ever done and the show notes, including
all the sources for the episodes Holly and I have
done so You can do all that so many things
at our website, which is missed in history dot com.
You can also subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts,
Google Play, anywhere else you get podcasts. For more on
(35:52):
this and thousands of other topics, is it how Stuff
works dot Com I a
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I am Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. I
have a slight cold voice today, so apologies that side
of the episode for that. Yeah, we both caught some
(00:24):
crab while we were in New York. Yep, souh that
apology aside. The last time we mentioned Hamilton's 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 are doing. She's a
(00:44):
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, 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 maccab
(01:05):
hooray maccob. It's almost impossible to separate Theodosia Burr Alston's
life from her parents, Erin Burr and Theodosja bartow and
when they met the elder. Theodosia was married to Jacques
Marcus Provo or Provost, depending on how you pronounce it
if you're French or American. He is also sometimes known
as James Mark Provost, who was an officer in the
(01:27):
British Army. Jacques and Theodosia had five children together, three
daughters and two sons, none of whom are the subject
of this episode. They all lived on a two 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,
(01:50):
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, 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
(02:13):
she was entertaining a lot of their most prominent military
and political leaders there, but somehow she managed to 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 Lawrens, Alexander Hamilton's
(02:35):
Charles Lee, James Monroe, and George Washington himself. Basically the elder.
Theodosia was hosting the entire cast of Hamilton's at the estate,
and of course there was her future husband, Aaron Burr,
who Theodosia met at the at the Hermitage while her
husband was stationed in Jamaica. Aaron Burr was a notorious philanderer,
(02:57):
but the first time he saw Theodosia, he was totally
convinced that she was, to use a slightly more recent term,
his soul mate. 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
(03:18):
forces there, he was installed as Lieutenant governor under the
British government. That delicate line 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
husband was no longer just an officer in the British Army.
He was a prominent part of the British government in
(03:41):
North America. 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. Theodosia did eventually leave the Hermitage because the
war in area became way supercarious for her to be
(04:02):
safe there, but the organized effort to force her off
the property was ultimately dropped. 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 Provost.
As long as he was stationed anywhere nearby, he visited
(04:25):
her as often as he could. In seventeen seventy nine,
at the age of twenty three. 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.
In December of see, Theodosia Provost learned that her first
(04:49):
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 to the
New York Bar, which he earned on April seventeenth, seventeen
eighty two, and then on July two of that year,
(05:12):
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,
and their early marriage was, by all accounts, a very
happy one. Theodosia was extremely intelligent, she was very well read,
(05:33):
and she and her husband shared a keen interest in
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 addition to the part where he had visited so
much before her husband died, she wasn't wealthy, and she
also was not considered to be particularly attractive, and it
(05:55):
was assumed that Aaron Burr would marry someone rich or
beautiful or both. They made their al Mauny residents into
a place that was home to French literature and fine art,
and on June twenty one, seventeen eighty three, their daughter,
who was christened Theodosia Barto Burr the following July, they
nicknamed her Miss PRIs, and in their letters to each
(06:16):
other and eventually to her, they called her Theo. Although
the Birds occupied a prominent place in Albany society and
his law practice was successful, erin Burn wanted to pursue
even greater opportunities. He was, as was the case through
much of his life, short on liquid funds, so he
borrowed money from an uncle to relocate the family to
(06:38):
New York City. 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 altogether. By sevent Her two
half brothers were already old enough to work as clerks
(06:59):
and their father's law office by the time that she
was born. They both had to swear allegiance to the
United States that they had been sent to fight with
the British when they were little. Her sister, Sally, was
born on June five, but she died at the age
of only three, and the younger Theodosia also had two
brothers who were both stillborn. So it was really Theodosia
(07:20):
who Aaron Burr started grooming for some future greatness as
part of his own personal legacy, And we're gonna talk
about how he did that, but first we're gonna pause
for a quick little sponsor break. Both of her parents
absolutely adored the young Theodosia Burr, and they raised her
(07:43):
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 her in education that
would have been expected for a young man from a
prominent family, but it really goes way farther than that.
(08:06):
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,
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,
(08:28):
something people were still commenting on the oddity of one
years later. Theodosia was a brilliant student even as a
young child. She was writing her father letters by 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,
(08:52):
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 History and Decline and
fall of the Roman Empire. She was widely regarded as
a prodigy. Mary wolston Crafts of Vindication of the Rights
of Woman is often credited as having inspired Aaron Burr
(09:13):
to secure this education for his daughter, and he definitely
did read that work in after which he called it
a work of genius. But 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. What
a Vindication of the Rights of Woman did do was
(09:34):
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 Wolston Craft's work, especially as it related
to the education of girls and young women. He imagined
that Theodosia could provide a living example that girls could
(09:54):
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. This
wasn't without its problems. Aaron Burr spent as much time
(10:16):
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 turn
for 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 and educational plans that
he had created. So just overseeing her daughter's education might
(10:38):
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 interested with carrying out various business matters
on her husband's behalf. At the same time, her health
had already been really poor even before her second marriage.
(11:00):
Towards the end of seventeen, the Elder Theodosia's health really
started to fail, and she was given a wide range
of treatments, from hemlock to laudanum two wine to mercury,
and none of this worked, and she died at home
on May eighteenth sevent The actual cause of death was
most likely stomach cancer. The young Theodosia was only ten
(11:24):
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. The Birds had multiple residences
(11:46):
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 we're speaking of, and enslave staff of approximately ten
people saw to a day to day care and management
of the property, including cook's maids, coachman, a valet, and
a doorman. By her early teens, Theodosia was officially the
(12:10):
mistress of the house, and by running the household and
acting as hostess, Theodosia meant and interacted with an incredibly
posh list of guests, 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,
(12:30):
she acquired a new teacher from France known as Madame
de Senat, who was governess to Natalie Delage Devolude. The
two of them, along with Senat's own daughter, had fled
the French Revolution, and upon arriving in New York, Madame
de Senat had set to work establishing a school to
cater to the children of prominent families. There she lived
and worked from her residence that burr also used as
(12:52):
an office, and Natalie and Theodosia, who were about the
same age, became best friends. In eighteen hundred, two days
happened that would radically change Theodosious life. One was an
incredibly convoluted presidential election, which would ultimately wind up with
her father becoming the third vice President of the United States.
(13:13):
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 Wakama River covered more than six thousand acres, which
were worked by more than two hundred enslaved Africans. Theodosia
(13:34):
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 to
(13:56):
convince her that it was the best thing to do,
along with easing her concern about what life would be
like is 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
(14:18):
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 both. Theodosia finally agreed with him, and
they got married in Albany on February second of eighteen
o one. In spite of her youth, Theodosia was probably
(14:40):
the most educated woman in the United States at the time.
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 joe
to Alston as charged Affair to the U S Minister
(15:03):
to France, imagining that Theodosia might continue her education there,
but Joseph decided to stick with his plantation. We will
get to Theodosia's married life and her eventual disappearance. After
another quick sponsor break in one, Theodosia and Joseph departed
(15:25):
on a bridal tour, simultaneously starting a trend by being
the first prominent couple to visit 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
of eighteen o two. His grandfather wanted so badly to
be present for the birth of his grandson that he
actually left the capital while Congress was still in sessions
(15:47):
so he could get there in time. The young Arid's
birth was long and difficult, and the delivery caused a
uterine pro lapse. A minor pro lapse 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
(16:09):
her unable to have any more children and lead to
recurring infections. Since there was no reliable way to 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
(16:31):
when she wrote to a doctor to describe what was
happening to her, she did it all in 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, which became an
annual event. 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
(16:55):
a whole deeply religious, and Theodosia was not. She was
also just not what an one expected of a planter's wife.
Although Charleston's society might have been more welcoming of an
exceptionally educated woman, a swampy rice plantation on the Wakama
River was far far from there. Plus, although Aaron Burr
enslaved people at his New York estates, and Theodosia had
(17:18):
been responsible in some to some extent, and 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 Emancipation Act,
which went into effect in seventeen So people who owned
lots of slaves not necessarily the biggest fan of Aaron
Burr and his politics. But as Joseph's wife, it was
(17:40):
Theodosia'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 dinners and soirees for presidents and
diplomats that had not meant things like distribut eating annual
(18:00):
cloth and allotments to hundreds of enslaved people. Theodosia and
her husband definitely missed each other and these annual stretches
of months and months when she was away, but South
Carolina just did not feel like home to her. In
New York did. Then, on July eleven, eighteen o four,
when she was twenty woman, Theodosia's father shot Alexander Hamilton's
(18:23):
in a duel in Hamilton's 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 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's knew he was committing incest with
(18:46):
Theodosia and had been spreading that around. But this really
comes from Gorvidal's ninety three novel Burr and his logic
as a writer was basically that it was the one
thing he could think of that would make Aaron Burr
angry enough to kill Alexander Hamilton's. There's really no evidence
that there was physical ancest going on, but it is
absolutely true that Burr's relationship with his daughter did not
(19:09):
have anything like what we would call healthy emotional boundaries
today at all, Like she became a definitely became an
emotional surrogate for her mother after her mother's death, and
their relationship was intense in a way that would not
strike people as normal. The duel with Alexander Hamilton's was
(19:29):
not Ver's only crime. He also embarked on a weird
scheme to invade Mexico, separate off the western part of
the U S territory, and succeeed, setting all of that
up as his personal empire, with Theodosia succeeding him as
empress after his death. There's a whole episode about that
in the archive as well, and that is actually going
to be our Saturday Classic this week. Yeah, that seems
(19:52):
like a bizarre story to bring up and not really
get into it, but this episode is not about Airin Burr,
so we will leave that to past hosts to cover
on Saturday. Long story short, Aaron Burr was arrested for
treason on February oh seven, and he faced trial in Richmond, Virginia.
In spite of her health, Theodosia and her husband traveled
(20:13):
there to be with him throughout the proceedings. Even though
he was acquitted on September one, his reputation was ruined
and he became the target of public outrage, even more
than he already had for killing Alexander Hamilton's. Theodosia's reputation
was tarnished by association as well. Erin Burr fled to Europe,
(20:34):
hoping to make a brief escape while the outrage blew over,
but when he tried to return, he was refused a
passport and he was barred from re entering the country
for more than four years. Theodosio 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
(20:57):
May fourth. His homecoming was soon marred by tragedy. Aaron
Burr Alston died on June 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 with the idea of being
reunited with her father. Of course, this was during the
(21:20):
War of eighteen twelve. Theodosia's husband had been elected governor
of South Carolina and was Brigadier General of the state militia,
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
(21:40):
would take less than a week, but it was an
already uncertain means of travel through an active war zone
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,
(22:01):
aboard a small pilot boat called the Patriot, on December twelve.
Some accounts less this is thet Dr. 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
(22:22):
to shore alone. Once the Patriots slipped out of you,
it was never seen again. 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
(22:42):
weather in Georgetown when the ships set sail, a heavy
storm had struck the coast of North Carolina not long
after she left. They clung to 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
(23:03):
and blackmail attempts related to that Mexico invasion plot, which
he had contributed money to. He died on September sixteen,
at the age of thirty seven. Aarin Bird 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
(23:27):
the Patriot, and it continued to for decades. To Quote
a New York Times piece written for the hundredth anniversary
of the disappearance, summing up what all that speculation had
been for all those decades, quote what happened to Theodosia
Burr Austin, the beautiful daughter of Aaron Burr, Vice President
of the United States and the reigning bell of diplomatic society?
(23:49):
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? 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
(24:12):
is that they were not stopped by the British Navy.
In James L. Mitchie scoured the logs of all British
ships that had been patrolling off the Carolina coast, and
none of them had any record of an encounter with
the Patriot. There are naturally a slew of erie and
sometimes Macab's stories about what happened to the Patriot and
(24:32):
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 Patriots set sail, but before she had heard
anything about what had happened. She ended a letter to
(24:54):
a friend quote, I think she must be dead. A
series of pirates all so gave multiple contradictory deathbed confessions
about having captured the Patriot and killed everyone aboard, including Theodosia.
A June article and the Mercantile Adviser reported that Jean
(25:14):
Defarge and Robert Johnson, privateers aboard the Patriot, had confessed
to taking over the ship two 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
(25:35):
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. 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
(25:58):
regardless of of what all they testified to, they were
they were going to be executed. Another confession made by
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
(26:19):
of him, he told them all kinds of stories about
his time as a pirate, including that he had captured
the Patriot and given Theodosia a choice of becoming his
concubine or walking the plank. According to Burdick, she chose
the latter, saying, quote vengeance's mind saith the Lord, I
will repay on her way down. There's no substantiation on
(26:41):
This story and walking the plank is also way more
associated with sensational 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 see, appearing not only in the
(27:01):
deathbed confessions of other purported pirates, but also the plot
of several sensational novels. Not every novel ended with a
plank walk, though. In Blenner Hasset or The Decrease of Fate,
a romance founded upon events in American History, which was
a book published in ninet one, the pirate captain falls
in love with Theodosia and she is accidentally shot by
(27:23):
someone in the navy who was aiming for him. Yeah,
the the guy 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 UH on the internet
at like archive dot org. It will be linked in
(27:44):
the shares. But in a way it's it's frustrating to
read because it has chapters and chapters and chapters that
are about her, her ancestors before it actually gets to her.
And then it's it's very clear that there is some
bias involved in how he tells the story of her life. Anyway,
outside the world of piracy, we're leaving pirates behind. There
(28:06):
is a grave at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Alexandria,
Virginia that is known as the Grave of the Female Stranger.
So according to the Lord, 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
(28:27):
on October fourteenth of eighteen sixteen and was buried in
a grave under an 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
(28:49):
would have been older than twenty three, is that the
identity of the woman buried in this grave as Theodosja
Burr Austin fifty seven years after the disappearance of the Patriot,
a doctor named W. G. Pool was submarine at Bang's Head,
North Carolina, when he was called on to see an
elderly woman known as Mrs Mann. As a gesture of
(29:10):
thanks and in lieu of cash payment, she gave him
an oil portrait of a lady which he had admired
while he was attending to her in her home. Dr
Pool tried to get Mrs Man 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
(29:34):
as bankers. He and some 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.
(29:56):
Somebody eventually suggested that this painting was of theodo Ja
Burrow Alston. It's hard to determine whether this painting. Notice
the nag's head portrait really is the Adosia. 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,
(30:17):
but several of the Alston's disagreed. At this point, it's
not really possible to determine if this is really a
painting of the Photoship Burr Alston, but it's it's one
of the most talked about theories for not not even
really a theory for her disappearance, like if she did
if if she was on the boat and that was
a picture of her, that part makes sense because maybe
(30:37):
she was carrying this painting of herself to her father,
who was she was going to visit, But it raises
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. J. A. Eliott of Norfolk, Virginia reported
(31:00):
a story in nineteen ten that he had heard earlier
from 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
(31:24):
had a daughter, she was born with the same three
fingers missing. Elliott said that the reason that it was
almost a 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. It's supposed to the
weird theories about what maybe happened. The most logical theory
(31:47):
is probably that the boat sank in a storm like that,
it seems like the most straightforward one, but having so
many weird stories about other people's claiming that they captured
at aspirates or that they they saw her somewhere afterwards,
Like there's a bunch of other weird rumors that we
didn't really get it too of, Like, oh, I definitely
saw her where she was definitely alive. There's that way
(32:11):
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. Yeah, well this was all
over newspapers, and I I read a whole bunch of
things from like a hundred year old copies of like
the New York Times, in the Boston Globe, obviously scanning
(32:31):
on the internet. I didn't go dig them physically up,
but uh, they're kept being all these reports about her,
like she really was a famous person when she died,
although at that point, like her association with her father's
killing of Alexander Hamilton's and weird scheme to take over
his own personal empire like that had, people didn't have
(32:52):
maybe quite as much of a glowing perception of her.
But she and her husband were definitely famous figures when
you vanished, and the the story of her disappearance was
just this huge source for rumors and and gossip for
for decades after it happened. Do you have a little
(33:13):
bit of uh, gossipy or no listener mail? While I
do have actual physical mail this time, I not not
really gossipy. New but I was in our Atlanta office
not long ago, which gave me the rare opportunity to
be the person to open some of our mail. And
so I have a couple of people to thank for
things that they sent our way. The first is Rashaan.
(33:36):
Rashan wrote to us from Virginia and talked about Virginia
having a large tourism campaign with that slogan Virginia is
for lovers, and eventually they made sort of specialized stickers
to be handed out at particular places, So at King's Dominion,
which is a theme park, they had Virginia is for
thrill lovers. And as some of the local breweries there's,
(33:57):
Virginia is for beer lovers. So he sent us Virginia
is for lovers stickers as well as Virginia is for
history lovers stickers. So thank you so much, Rashawn for
sending that our way. Um. I also have a really
lovely letter from Meg, and Meg sent us a letter
where she apologizes for her penmanship, which is unnecessary because
(34:21):
it's so much better than my penmanship. But she wrote
about our are sewing machine episode, and she drew on
the letter little spools of thread and a needle and stitches,
and it's just really lovely and charming. Um. And she
talks about being really tickled with the episode about sewing
machines because she found so many relatable tidbits in it.
(34:44):
Um And she also sent us some NASA bookmarks and
stickers from having volunteered with them at one of the
official eclipse viewing sites in Charleston, South Carolina. So thank
you so so much, too, Meg for sending that our way,
and too Rashawn for sending us stickers from Virginia. If
(35:04):
you would like to write to us about this or
any other podcast or a history podcasts at how stuff
Works dot com. We're also on Facebook and Twitter and
Pinterest and everything. All of our social media is at
Missed in History, so you can follow us there to
see updates about the show. On Facebook and Twitter, we
do lots of this Day in History posts of previous
episodes that have something that occurred that particular day in history,
(35:27):
so you can come to our website, which is Missed
in History dot com find us searchable archive of every
episode that we've ever done and the show notes, including
all the sources for the episodes Holly and I have
done so You can do all that so many things
at our website, which is missed in history dot com.
You can also subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts,
Google Play, anywhere else you get podcasts. For more on
(35:52):
this and thousands of other topics, is it how Stuff
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