Only daughter of Aaron Burr and his wife, Theodosia (Prevost); born in New York City in 1783; lost at sea, in January 1813. She was a brilliant and highly accomplished woman, for her father superintended her education, carefully developing her mental and physical qualities and training her to independence of thought and self-reliance. She married Joseph Alston (1801), afterward governor of South Carolina. She and her father were extremely attached to each other, and her faith in him remained unshaken through all the misfortunes which he brought upon himself. Burr’s scheme to become emperor of Mexico was known by herself and husband, and it was even planned that her only child, a son, would be heir apparent to the throne. On her father’s trial for treason at Richmond, she appeared in court, and her beauty and graces were not without effect, both on jury and spectators, in securing a favorable verdict and modifying popular indignation. She wrote eloquent letters to Mrs. Madison, Secretary Gallatin and former friends of her father, while he was in exile, and thus made it possible for him to return to the United States. The death of her only child was a terrible blow, and made her ill with a fever; but learning that her father had arrived in America, she left Charleston on the pilot-boat Patriot, and started for New York. A storm off Cape Hatteras probably capsized the boat, for it was never heard of again.
