THEODOSIA
Submitted by David K. Fesler
This activity was created by Becky Dingle and Carol Poole expressly for use by classroom teachers and their students.
Oak Alley at Brookgreen Gardens
A visitor coming to Brookgreen Gardens today feels that he has gone back in time. The beautiful landscape, geographically isolated by rivers and the sea, has basically been left untouched by development. It gives one the feeling as he passes through the entrance gate that time has stopped in this beautiful fairyland. One also, however, senses that mystery and intrigue must abound among the moss draped trees and The Oaks plantation, once belonging to Joseph and Theodosia Burr Alston. One would be right to assume this. One of the great American mysteries begins at this very spot. Listen well to the tale....
New York and Albany society were shocked when they heard that Theodosia Burr, the beautiful daughter of a powerful American Revolutionary figure and future vice-president, Aaron Burr, had agreed to marry Joseph Alston of South Carolina's Waccamaw region. Young Alston was heir to a rice planting fortune, but there were so many more eligible bachelors in New York. Gossip spread that Aaron Burr must have arranged the marriage to get money from the rice empire for some of his political schemes. Most of northern society thought Joseph Alston "vain and silly," and some thought him "ugly and ill-tempered."
But Theodosia saw him differently. "God knows how delighted I shall be when in your arms," she once wrote him. Joseph's father was William "King Billy" Alston, the wealthiest rice planter of the Waccamaw Empire. This was the same "King Billy" who entertained President Washington at Clifton during his coastal visit in 1791.
They were married in Albany on February 2, 1801, when she was eighteen and Joseph twenty-two. On their honeymoon, they attended the presidential inauguration of President Jefferson and saw Theodosia's father Aaron sworn in as Vice-President. After leaving the new capital city of Washington, D.C., the newlyweds headed towards The Oaks, their new home (where Brookgreen Gardens is located today). Theodosia wrote in her journal that she had one fear and that was fear of the deadly fever (malaria) that seemed to strike so many in this area. Little did she know at the time that this fear would materialize and cost her everything that she loved.
Soon after their marriage, Joseph Alston was elected to the state house of representatives and was gone quite frequently. Theodosia's great love became her son whom the couple named Aaron Burr Alston in honor of Theodosia's father. A lively and talented child, young Aaron made The Oaks his playground and became the object of adoration for his parents and grandparents.
But tragedy struck...Aaron Burr Alston died from the swamp fever (malaria) at age ten. Joseph wrote, "That boy, at once our happiness and our pride, is taken from us --- is dead." Theodosia went into a great depression. Her own health was in jeopardy from the swamp fever, and her father's reputation had been greatly destroyed by his duel with Alexander Hamilton resulting in Hamilton's death. It was a very difficult time fo the couple.
Joseph decided to send Theodosia to her father in New York hoping her health and spirits would improve with the visit. Aaron Burr sent a New York doctor named Timothy Green to escort Theodosia. Joseph could not leave because he had just been electred governor of South Carolina. Dr. Green booked passage for himself and Theodosia on the Patriot, a former American warship sailing from Georgetown.
This house on Front Street was where Theodosia Burr was entertained on her
last night before the fateful sea journey began.
It was a bright winter day when Theodosia left. The boat pulled away from the Georgetown dock just after noon on Thursday, December 31, 1812. Joseph sailed as far as the entrance to the bay with his wife and then boarded a pilot boat back to Georgetown. Joseph embraced his wife, promised to join her in New York as soon as he could, and watch the ship disappear over the horizon. He would never see her again.
This warehouse on Front Street stands at the point
where Theodosia Burr embarked upon the boat leaving Georgetown forever.
The voyage from Georgetown to New York normally took six days and when Joseph had heard nothing from her in two weeks, he was frantic. His anxiety heightened when Aaron Burr confirmed that the boat never arrived. One month after he said good-bye to Theodosia, Joseph finally gave up hope of ever seeing her again.
Joseph never recovered from his wife's disappearance. He would sit for hours in Theodosia's bedroom in a severe state of depression. Three years later, his poor health, brought on by grief, cost him his life, as he was stricken with a seizure. His last request to Aaron Burr was for a portrait of Theodosia.
Theodosia about 1800
Theodosia's fate remains a mystery. Legends and theories abound as time goes by. Today two main theories of the disappearance exists:
1. Investigators believed that the Patriot foundered in a storm off Cape Hatteras, "the Graveyard of the Atlantic," and went down when the warship's heavy cannon shifted sides.
2. Years later, however, a series of deathbed statements uttered by former pirates offered a different story of the Patriot's fate. The Patriot had been captured by pirates. In 1848 one old man said on his deathbed that he had helped murder the passengers and crew of the Patriot. One of the victims, he recalled, was a strikingly beautiful woman who had been offered her life if she would be mistress to the pirate captain. Instead, the defiant beauty had chosen death. He could not remember her name, the dying pirate said, but it was something like "Odessa Burr Alston."
So, the ending to the tale did not go well. The beautiful Theodosia Burr Alston's fate will always be surrounded in sadness and mystery!