Soon after Burr entered politics, his wife developed cancer of the most virulent character. Everything that money or available skill could accomplish was done for her, but she died after a lingering and painful illness, in the spring of 1794.
They had lived together happily for twelve years, and he grieved for her deeply and sincerely. Yet the greatest and most absorbing passion of his life was for his daughter, Theodosia, who was named for her mother and was born in the first year of their marriage. When little Theodosia was first laid in her father’s arms, all that was best in him answered to her mute plea for his affection, and later, all that was best in him responded to her baby smile.
Between those two, there was ever the fullest confidence, never tarnished by doubt or mistrust, and when all the world forsook him, Theodosia, grown to womanhood, stood proudly by her father’s side and shared his blame as if it had been the highest honour.
When she was a year or two old, they moved to a large house at the corner of Cedar and Nassau Streets, in New York City. A large garden surrounded it and there were grapevines in the rear. Here the child grew strong and healthy, and laid the foundations of her girlish beauty and mature charm. When she was but three years old her mother wrote to the father, saying:
“Your dear little Theodosia cannot hear you spoken of without an apparent melancholy; insomuch, that her nurse is obliged to exert her invention to divert her, and myself avoid the mention of you in her presence. She was one whole day indifferent to everything but your name. Her attachment is not of a common nature.”
And again:
“Your dear little daughter seeks you twenty times a day, calls you to your meals, and will not suffer your chair to be filled by any of the family.”
The child was educated as if she had been a boy. She learned to read Latin and Greek fluently, and the accomplishments of her time were not neglected. When she was at school, the father wrote her regularly, and did not allow one of her letters to wait a day for its affectionate answer. He corrected her spelling and her grammar, instilled sound truths into her mind, and formed her habits. From this plastic clay, with inexpressible love and patient toil, he shaped his ideal woman.
She grew into a beautiful girl. Her features were much like her father’s. She was petite, graceful, plump, rosy, dignified, and gracious. In her manner, there was a calm assurance—the air of mastery over all situations—which she doubtless inherited from him.
When she was eighteen years of age, she married Joseph Alston of South Carolina, and, with much pain at parting from her father, she went there to live, after seeing him inaugurated as Jefferson’s Vice-President. His only consolation was her happiness, and when he returned to New York, he wrote her that he approached the old house as if it had been the sepulchre of all his friends. “Dreary, solitary, comfortless—it was no longer home.”