Theodosia Burr Alston

Theodosia Burr Alston (1783–1813) was brilliant, accomplished, and unusually well educated for a woman of her time. Her father, Aaron Burr, firmly believed that girls should study the same subjects that boys did, and so she learned mathematics, Latin, Greek, and composition in addition to the more traditional subjects for girls, such as French, music, and dancing.

Theodosia’s mother died when she was eleven, and through her teenage years, she became her father’s hostess, presiding over dinners for members of New York society. When she was eighteen, she married Joseph Alston, a wealthy southern plantation owner who later became governor of South Carolina. Their only child, Aaron Burr Alston, was born in 1802. He died of a fever at the age of ten. Devastated, she made plans to sail to New York to see her father, who had just returned to the United States after four years in Europe. The schooner she boarded on December 31, 1812, disappeared at sea, possibly taken by pirates or sunk in a storm.