The Spark of a New Nation: The Story of Theodosia Burr

“Dear Theodosia” is a song in the musical Hamilton. It juxtaposes the birth of Alexander Hamilton’s first child, Phillip, in 1782 with the birth of Aaron Burr’s first child, Theodosia, in 1783. The two young revolutionaries stood side by side in fighting against the British. Hamilton—an energetic hustler of a man—and Burr, a quiet man of action whose thoughts remained mysterious to those around him would eventually become political rivals. But, when it came down to it, the two men became fathers to their children and the new nation.

Theodosia Burr and Phillip Hamilton would have the same tutors—the fee Burr paid for his daughter’s education double that of Hamilton. Aaron corrected the grammar and spelling in her letters, sent his daughter books, and showed off her letters in the Senate. Theo—as Burr affectionately called his daughter—lived the existence of an eldest son. Aaron Burr and Theodosia Bartow Burr raised their daughter to have her father’s sharp intellect and her mother’s social refinement.

“Theodosia’s education was the same as a university-educated man of the time,” says Karen Cherro Quiñones, a historian and author of Theodosia Burr: Teen Eyewitness to the Founding of the New Nation. She also notes that Aaron Burr was mocked for educating his daughter in such a way—including by Alexander Hamilton.

But Aaron Burr had sway. His father was among the founders of the College of New Jersey—now known as Princeton University. It was from the academics at Princeton that he picked to educate Theodosia.

Still, as Theodosia came of age, she would become popular among New York society. Aaron Burr wrote in a letter to her in 1799, “One would think that that the town was going into mourning for your absence. I am perpetually stopped in the streets by little and big girls. Where is Miss Burr? Won’t she come up this winter? Oh, why didn’t you bring her?”

Theodosia was known as a spark. Whether in her studies or the social scene, she excelled and made good impressions. Her father informed her never to take bait in a conversation and to allow more established ladies to steer the conversation away. Theodosia read The Aeneid, fluently spoke French, and was capable in Latin and Greek. As she grew, even her father could not contain her. But, he didn’t want it any other way.

“Go on, my dear girl, and you will become all that I wish,” wrote Aaron Burr in a 1794 letter to Theodosia.

***

Aaron Burr wrote to his daughter in 1801, “You have learned from the newspapers (which you never read) the death of Phillip Hamilton.” No matter the rivalry their fathers shared, the two shared the same tutors and attended the same schools. At a year apart, the two undoubtedly knew each other: Phillip, a hot-headed copy of his father, and Theodosia, the whipsmart girl who adored anyone she could have intelligent conversation with.

Phillip’s cockiness eventually got him killed on a beach in New Jersey. It would be Theodosia’s grief and loneliness that would lead to her seawater-soaked death somewhere off the coast of North Carolina.

***

Theodosia Burr could have married into any notable family she wanted. According to Quiñones, everyone believed she would end up marrying her “bad boy” classmate, Washington Irving. Aaron Burr allowed his daughter to choose the man she would marry within reason. He trusted his daughter’s sensibilities and wanted her to have a happy marriage like he had with her mother.

Politically, a marriage into the Livingston family—who counted a prominent judge and the Mayor of New York as its members—or another prominent New York society family would have been savvy. So, when Theodosia chose to marry the son of a South Carolina legislator, New York society—as they often were with Theodosia—was bewildered.

Despite her husband’s assurances that what Theodosia had heard about South Carolina was untrue, she found the state backward and boring. As she wrote in a letter to her husband in 1801, “How strange that Mr. Alston should be wrong.” Her tongue-in-cheek quips were reminiscent of her mother—who died when she was eleven—and part of Theodosia’s overflowing charm.

Theodosia Burr married Joseph Alston in 1801. The two honeymooned in Niagra Falls—popularizing the site as a honeymoon destination for the next two centuries—and their son, Aaron Burr Alston was born in 1802.

Their marriage—from all accounts—was happy, except for Theodosia’s dislike of their locale. She grew uncomfortable with the slave-owning ways of her husband and his family. Aaron Burr freed his slaves years before and paid his remaining Black servants a wage, encouraged them to learn how to read, use his personal library, and teach his daughter their language (in this case, French).

The Burr’s cook, Thomas, was a black man who made frequent use of Aaron Burr’s library and had known Theodosia her entire life—becoming a trusted friend and confidante. He accompanied her down to South Carolina. Theodosia wrote later, wondering what Thomas thought when they stepped out of the carriage to the many enslaved black faces looking back at them. Theodosia—with all of her intellect and culture—was naive to the true state of slavery.

Faced with this personal reckoning, Theodosia rebelled in small ways like asking women what they wanted to name their child instead of naming them herself (which would have been her job as the lady of the house). Still, this contributed to the lasting unhappiness and depression she experienced after the birth of her son. Like Persephone, it was decided she and her son would half the year in New York with her father and the other half with her husband in South Carolina.

Through his marriage, Joseph Alston was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives. Under Aaron Burr’s tutelage, Alston would eventually become the 44th Governor of South Carolina.

***

Without his wife and daughter around as stabilizing forces, Aaron Burr finally cracked. After a decade and a half of never responding to rumors about him or jeering from his political rivals, Burr challenged Alexander Hamilton to a duel. Theodosia heard about the duel—and its tragic outcome—well after the fact. She was so enraged with her father that she stopped writing him for a significant amount of time—a rare occurrence considering the thousands of letters they wrote each other in her short life. Even when Theodosia could do nothing, she made her mind known.

After the duel, Aaron Burr’s reputation continued to falter. Theodosia continued to support him through his exile and accusations of treason (which he was never convicted of and many would argue his actions were not treasonous from a modern perspective). During his exile, Theodosia wrote to Dolley Madison—the current First Lady and a friend of Aaron Burr’s—pleading for their help in bringing her father home. She wrote, “...I trust it will be treated with delicacy; of this I am more desirous as Mr. Alston is ignorant of the step I have taken in writing to you; which perhaps, nothing could excuse but the warmth of filial affection; if it be an error, attribute it to the indiscreet zeal of a daughter whose soul sinks at the gloomy prospect of a long and indefinite separation from a Father almost adored…”

American Revolution historian, Mary Beth Norton of Cornell University confirmed that Theodosia’s relationship with her father was unique for the time, “I know of no other father/daughter relationship like it, at least not among the well-known political leaders of the early nation.”

***

In 1812, at the age of ten, Aaron Burr Alston died of malaria. Just days before, the nation went to war with Britain again. Theodosia anguished, becoming ill and depressed at the loss of her only child.

Her father returned from his European exile in July 1812 and Joseph Alston wrote to him promptly to deliver the tragic news and ask if Theodosia could travel to New York and stay with him—where she had always been happier. It took until the first days of the New Year of 1813 to arrange her passage on a former privateering schooner called Patriot headed for New York City. Due to his political obligations, Joseph Alston did not go with her. He asked a family friend—who was a doctor and could watch over Theodosia’s ill health—to accompany her.

The ship would never arrive in New York City.

Aaron Burr and Joseph Alston sent out search parties in the weeks following her disappearance. But, by the end of February, the two men accepted that they would never see the bright young woman again. She was 29.

No one knows for sure what happened. There was a storm off the coast of North Carolina and the captain was in a rush to get to get to New York. Also, as a former privateering ship, it was a target for pirates who operated in the area. The livery had been changed before the ill-fated voyage, but many believe it would not have mattered and would have been recognized anyway.

The most plausible theories remain a storm or a pirate takeover which involved the murder of everyone aboard. Quiñones noted that two former pirates made deathbed confessions that they were part of the crew that hijacked the ship—describing Theodosia well. Many less plausible theories including the “Nag’s Head Portrait" emerged in the ensuing centuries. The "Nag's Head Portrait" was posited to be a portrait of an alive Theodosia who wandered into a North Carolina town as a stranger. The woman died two years later.

In all likelihood, the spark of the new America was extinguished on the late night of January 2, 1813, or the early morning of January 3, 1813. Theodosia’s father and husband never fully recovered from her death. Aaron Burr would live another two decades fraught with gambling problems, debt, and womanizing. He would have more children, but he never quite had another relationship like he had with his dear Theo.

Joseph Alston’s grief overtook his political duties as governor of South Carolina. He would die two years later never remarrying or having any other children. In a letter to Aaron Burr following Theodosia’s death he wrote, “But the man who has been deemed worthy of the heart of Theodosia Burr, and who has felt what it is to be blessed with such a woman’s, will never forget his elevation.”

***

The tale of Phillip Hamilton and Theodosia Burr is nearly Shakespearean. Two young souls—so vibrant and white-hot with potential—snuffed out like a midnight candle. At the end of Hamilton, the duel between Burr and Hamilton occurs, leaving Hamilton dead only two years after the death of his son in almost identical circumstances. It would take another decade for Aaron Burr to feel the grief Alexander Hamilton did for Phillip. In terms of plot, this would be justice served for the outrageous killing of one of America’s Found Fathers.

But I see it differently. At this moment, Burr and Hamilton are not political rivals or frenemies. No juxtaposition of the two can ignore their similarities. They are simply two men and two fathers grieving the untimely and violent deaths of their children.