Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth Century

by Virginia Tatnall Peacock

After her mother's death, Burr, who had a profound admiration for the language, literature, and people of France, consigned her to a French governess. She acquired a complete mastery of that tongue, and the fluency with which she spoke it added much to the grace with which she presided over her father's home, for Burr frequently entertained Frenchmen. Louis Philippe, Jerome Bonaparte, Talleyrand, and Volney were all at various times his guests at Richmond Hill.

When Theodosia was fourteen she took her place at the head of her father's household and became his inseparable companion, her playful wit illuminating his hours of relaxation, her steadfast courage, her strength, her very presence, constituting his most powerful defence in the darkest hours of his life.

She had much of her mother's self-poise and elegance of manner, together with her father's dignity and wit. When she reached maturity, though short in stature like her father's family, she carried herself with a noble dignity which, with a certain lofty benevolence of countenance, the refinement of her features, the frank intelligence of her brow, the healthful bloom of her complexion, made her singularly beautiful. So absolute was her father's confidence in her that he wrote when she was but seventeen, "Many are surprised that I could repose in you so great a trust as that of yourself, but I knew you were equal to it, and I am not deceived."

He sent Brant, the Indian chief, to her from Philadelphia with a letter of introduction,—she was but fourteen at the time and mistress of Richmond Hill, where she entertained him with an ease which gave her father much gratification. She gave a dinner in his honor, inviting to meet him some of her father's friends, among them Volney, Bishop Moore, Dr. Bard, and Dr. Hosack. She was already a belle, with many admirers ever in her wake, when Edward Livingston, then mayor of New York, taking her aboard a French frigate lying in the harbor of the city, thus warned her: "You must bring none of your sparks on board, Theodosia. We have a magazine here, and we shall all be blown up."

Her life was full of happiness at this time, with Hamilton's wife and daughters among her friends, her father one of the Presidential possibilities, and she enjoying much of his society, accompanying him frequently to Albany on horseback and visiting in the neighborhood while he transacted his business at the capital.

In February, 1801, a few months before she was eighteen, Theodosia was married to Joseph Alston, of South Carolina. He also was young, being but twenty-two, and wealthy, possessing extensive rice plantations, talented and ambitious, though as yet without a specific object on which to expend these qualities. He had studied law and been admitted to the bar, though he had not begun to practise. Upon Burr's suggestion he entered upon a political career, rising eventually to the governorship of his State.

Theodosia argued for a deferment of the marriage, quoting Aristotle, that a man should not marry till he was thirty-six. With convincing eloquence and ardor, Alston replied, winning his suit, notwithstanding Aristotle and other equally eminent authorities.

On February 7, 1801, the New York Commercial Advertiser announced the marriage, which had taken place on the 2d, at Albany, where the Legislature, of which Burr was then a member, was in session. It was a period of intense excitement throughout the country, and the names of Jefferson and Burr were in all mouths. The people of the country had cast a tie vote, which threw the election into the House of Representatives. Party spirit manifested itself for the first time in the young republic, and the strength of the constitution was early put to a severe test.

Theodosia, on her way to her new home in the South, stopped in Washington, where, on the 4th of March, she saw her father inducted into the Vice-Presidency.

Her marriage and her father's new honors inaugurated for her three years of absolute happiness. Though her husband's home and her father's were a journey of twenty days apart, she went frequently back and forth, and though she wrote to her husband during one of her early visits to her old home, "Where you are, there is my country, and in you are centred all my wishes," she was undoubtedly in better health and spirits when in her northern home. Her winters were passed in Charleston, where she was well received and much beloved, and where she became an important factor in her husband's political success.