Theodosia Burr Alston

Theodosia Burr Alston (June 21, 1783 – January 2 or 3, 1813) was an American socialite and the daughter of the third U.S. Vice President, Aaron Burr, and Theodosia Bartow Prevost. Her husband, Joseph Alston, was governor of South Carolina during the War of 1812. She was lost at sea at age 29. Early life Theodosia Burr Alston was born to Aaron Burr and Theodosia Bartow Prevost in Albany, New York in 1783, a year after they married. Alston's mother was the widow of Jacques Marcus Prevost (1736-1781), a British Army officer who settled in New York City; she had five other children from that marriage and was nine years Burr's senior. Alston was raised mostly in New York City. Her education was closely supervised by her father, who stressed mental discipline. In addition to the more conventional subjects such as French (the French textbook by Martel, Martel's Elements, published by Van Alen in New York in 1796, is dedicated to Theodosia), music, and dancing, the young "Theo" began to study arithmetic, Latin, Greek, and English composition. She applied herself to English in the form of letters to her father, which were responded to promptly, with the inclusion of detailed criticism. Their correspondence numbered thousands of letters. Theodosia Bartow Burr died when her daughter was eleven years old. After this event, her father closely supervised his daughter's social education, including training in an appreciation of the arts. By the age of fourteen, she began to serve as hostess at Richmond Hill, Burr's stately home in what is now Greenwich Village. Once, when Burr was away in 1797, his daughter presided over a dinner for Joseph Brant, Chief of the Six Nations. On this occasion, she invited physicians David Hosack and Samuel Bard, and Bishop Benjamin Moore, among other notables.