She died on the 9th of September, 1832, and is the only woman who was ever honored with a public funeral in Washington. Through her charities she had become as widely known and as tenderly loved in the later years of her life as she had been in her youth through qualities not less endearing.
The following tribute to her is by Horatio Greenough:
"'Mid rank and wealth and worldly pride,
From every snare she turned aside.
She sought the low, the humble shed,
Where gaunt disease and famine tread;
And from that time, in youthful pride,
She stood Van Ness's blooming bride,
No day her blameless head o'er past
But saw her dearer than the last."
[THEODOSIA BURR]
(MRS. JOSEPH ALSTON)
Theodosia Burr was, as has been said of the daughter of another eminent statesman with whom Aaron Burr was closely identified, "the soul of her father's soul." If we would know the better part of a man who was one of the most remarkable characters of his age, we must know Theodosia, through whom, perhaps, his name, which all the subtlety of his soul was bent on immortalizing, may live to a better fame in the centuries to come than has attended it through the years of that in which he lived. Under the inspiration of her presence both her father and husband rose to lofty pinnacles in the political arena of their country. Her father on the eve of her marriage stood at the very portals of the Chief Magistracy. In less than ten years of political life he had so progressed that the election of 1800 resulted in a tie vote for the Presidency between Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson.
In 1801, while the festivities attending Theodosia's marriage at Albany were at their height, the House of Representatives at Washington entered upon that long session of seven days which terminated in declaring Thomas Jefferson President of the United States and Aaron Burr Vice-President.
From the moment Theodosia linked her life with another's, and thus in a measure ceased to be part of his, the retrogressive period of Aaron Burr's life began.
To her husband she carried that same inspiring influence which she had wielded over her father. She gave an impetus to his luxuriant and aimless existence, and at the time of the tragedy which ended her twenty-nine years of life he was occupying the gubernatorial chair of his State. Her life was closely allied not only with the private interests, but with the political ambitions of both. Her father rarely dined, either among friends or strangers, that her health was not drunk. He made her known to everybody, and during his travels in Europe so interested Jeremy Bentham and other writers in her that they sent her sets of their books.