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Was
South Carolina’s ‘Lost’ First Lady Buried On The Texas Coast? by
C. F. Eckhardt | 
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Aaron
Burr, once Vice President of the United States and, for years, one of the most
unjustly-maligned men in U. S. history, had a daughter named Theodosia. She was
his only legitimate offspring.
Theodosia Burr met and ultimately married
Joseph Alston, who was, at the time, the youngest governor in the short history
of the state of South Carolina. Early in 1812 Theodosia Burr Alston gave birth
to a son. On Christmas Day of that year, she and her son boarded the coasting
barque Patriot to sail to New York so Aaron Burr could meet his grandson.
The Patriot never arrived in New York. Many years later a drunken derelict
lay dying in an old sailors’ home. He claimed, on his death bed, to have been
a pirate. According to his story the barque Patriot was capture, looted,
and burned and all aboard, including Aaron Burr’s daughter and grandson, were
murdered. That story has been accepted as the fate of Theodosia Burr Alston and
her infant son, though it has never been corroborated by any second source.
When
Anglo-Americans began to settle in the southeastern part of what was then the
Mexican province of Téjas, they encountered an Indian tribe with an evil
reputation. The tribe was the Karankawa, and they were acknowledged to
be cannibalistic. However, they did trade with the new settlers—probably because
they were outnumbered, the Karankawa or ‘Kronks,’ as the settlers called them,
were never numerous—and the newcomers were much better armed. Chief among the
traders was a large brave who spoke excellent English. He was asked where he learned
it.
The story he told was of a hermit who the Karankawa believed to be
possessed by a demon. Among all primitive peoples the world over there seems to
be a prohibition against harming the insane. The reason is a fear that the demon
possessing the insane one will leave the host upon death and possess the person
who killed its host. There is, however, no apparent tabu about talking to—and
learning from—one so possessed. The hermit came to southeastern Texas sometime
before 1812 and took up residence in Karankawa country. The tall brave learned
English—grammatically correct English—from him.
The brave also wore a large
gold locket on a fine chain around his neck. He was asked where he got it. From
his white wife, he explained. And where had he gotten a white wife? The great
storm brought her to him on one of the big white man canoes and then the storm
god took her life, but not before she gave him the necklace.
Upon examination
the locket proved to have a miniature painting, probably on ivory, inside. The
painting showed a handsome young man holding an infant. Engraved on the back of
the locket was the word ‘Theodosia.’
The
great hurricane of 1816 was certainly the storm of the century, perhaps the storm
of the second millennium. During the storm Jean Laffite sailed a ship drawing
12 feet across Galveston Island without grounding. As late as 1825 there were
high-water marks 20 feet up on trees as much as 10 miles inland.
According
to the Karankawas, they survived the storm as their people always had. They climbed
as high as possible into deep-rooted trees and tied themselves into the branches.
After the storm blew itself out the brave went to see how his English-speaking
friend had fared.
The hermit had not done well. He was apparently not
a coastal Southerner, for he climbed into the crown of a spreading liveoak and
tied himself into the branches. As coastal Southerners know, liveoaks—called ‘water
oaks’ in some parts of the South—are very shallow-rooted. Once the ground softens
from heavy, continuous rain, even a moderate wind will topple huge liveoaks. Previous
to the 1816 storm there was a considerable forest of large liveoaks at the mouth
of the Rio San Bernardo, today’s San Bernard River. For years after the
storm the fallen trunks of huge liveoaks littered the now-barren coastal landscape.
The hermit’s tree fell and he was drowned.
There was, however, something
more interesting than a dead hermit at the mouth of the river. Ashore, her keel
broken, was a sizeable ship. The brave said he climbed aboard. The deck was littered
with debris and bodies. As he prowled the ship he heard a voice calling for help—in
English. He followed the sound to what appears to have been the sterncastle. There
he found a small white woman, completely naked save for the necklace he now wore,
chained by one ankle to a bulkhead. He freed her from the chain and carried her
ashore.
She apparently fainted at the sight of the brave, for a Karankawa
brave was an intimidating sight. Karankawa men stood, on average, taller than
six feet. Their name, among other tribes—other than ‘eaters of men’—was Bigfeet
for their huge, flat feet. This particular Karankawa habitually wore only a buckskin
breechclout and a headdress made from deer antlers. He was also, as was typical
of his tribe, well armed—certainly with a huge knife and a war club, probably
also with the huge bow made of native cane that the tribe favored. In addition,
the tribe smeared their bodies with a home-made insect repellent, the primary
ingredient of which was rancid sharks’-liver oil. He probably reeked to the heavens
as well as looked like some sort of Hellish horned demon.
When she finally
awoke, he began speak to her in English. This appeared to hearten her. She asked
him to take her to the people who taught him English. When he told her there had
been only one and he perished in the storm, she apparently lost all hope.
She
told him she was the daughter of a great chief badly misunderstood by his people,
and the wife of another great, but lesser chief. She had been on a boat going
to see her father when another boat—the one on which he found her—attacked. All
aboard except her—but including her infant son—were murdered by the crew of the
boat he found her aboard. Then she gave him the locket and told him to find people
who spoke English, show them the locket, and tell them the story. Sometime in
the next 24 hours she died. The brave buried his ‘white wife’ near the site of
the shipwreck.
The brave refused all offers to trade for the locket and
necklace. It had been given to him by his white wife, he said. It was all he had
from her. He would never surrender it.
All Karankawas were eventually expelled
from eastern Texas, pushed down the shore to the vicinity of Corpus
Christi and Padre Island. The last Karankawas, no more than a few dozen in
all, boarded canoes in the fall of 1836 and headed south down Laguna Madre between
Padre Island and the Texas coast. The were last seen paddling across a huge, shallow
inlet known as Baffin Bay, in present Kenedy County, when a storm blew up out
of the Gulf. No trace of them or their canoes was ever seen again.
Who
was the Karankawa brave’s ‘white wife?’ Theodosia Burr Alston’s father, Aaron
Burr, was certainly ‘a great chief badly misunderstood by his people,’ a misunderstanding
that to a considerable extent continues today. Joseph Alston, her husband, was
also a ‘great chief,’ but certainly a lesser one than her father. She had an infant
son. The coasting barque Patriot was never again seen after crossing the
bar at Charleston Harbor on Christmas Day, 1812. The locket, containing a painting
of a handsome young man holding an infant, was engraved on the back with the name
‘Theodosia.’
Was the brave’s ‘white wife’ Theodosia Burr Alston? No one
can say for sure. | |
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