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To speak of her as "Burr Alston" is an anachronistic modernization; in her own time and in modern histories she is referenced only as Theodosia or Mrs. Alston. She wasn't married at 11, so..... |
→Disappearance: Moving and rewriting the convoluted tale Snow presents, which is recognized by modern historians as carrying fictional elements. The painting is not by Vanderlyn |
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* The most romantic legend concerning Theodosia's fate involves piracy and a Karankawa Indian chief on the Texas Gulf Coast. The earliest American settlers to the Gulf Coast testified of a Karankawa warrior wearing a gold locket inscribed "Theodosia." He had claimed that after a terrible storm, he found a ship wrecked at the mouth of the San Bernard River. Hearing a faint cry, he boarded the hulk and found a white woman, naked except for the gold locket, chained to a bulkhead by her ankle. The woman fainted on seeing the Karankawa warrior, and he managed to pull her free and carry her to the shore. When she revived she told him that she was the daughter of a great chief of the white men, who was misunderstood by his people and had to leave his country. She gave him the locket and told him that if he ever met white men he was to show them the locket and tell them the story, and then died in his arms.
* Another myth about her fate traces its origin to Charles Etienne Arthur Gayarre's novel ''Fernando de Lemos: Truth and Fiction: A Novel'' (1872). Gayarre devoted one chapter to a confession by the pirate [[Dominique You]]. In Gayarre's story You admitted having captured the ''Patriot'' after he discovered it dismasted off Cape Hatteras following a storm. You and his men murdered the crew, while Theodosia was made to walk the plank: "She stepped on it and descended into the sea with graceful composure, as if she had been alighting from a carriage," Gayarre wrote in You's voice. "She sank, and rising again, she, with an indescribable smile of angelic sweetness, waved her hand to me as if she meant to say: 'Farewell, and thanks again'; and then sank forever."<ref>Richard N. Cote, ''Theodosia Burr Alston'', pgs. 293-294</ref> Because Gayarre billed his novel as a mixture of "truth and fiction" there was popular speculation about whether his account of You's confession might be real, and the story entered American folklore.<ref>David Stick, ''Graveyard of the Atlantic: Shipwrecks of the North Carolina Coast'', pg. 7</ref> The American folklorist Edward Rowe Snow later put together an account in ''Strange Tales from Nova Scotia to Cape Hatteras'' incorporating the Gayarre story with later offshoots; for example, on February 14, 1903, one Mrs. Harriet Sprague issued a sworn statement before Notary Freeman Atwell, of Cass County, Michigan claiming to corroborate the details of You's confession in Gayarre's 1872 novel. Mrs. Sprague described the contents of an 1848 confession by pirate Frank Burdick, an alleged shipmate of You's when the ''Patriot'' was discovered. The pirates left most of Alston's clothing untouched, as well as a portrait of Alston. Later, "wreckers" (locals known for rifling stranded vessels in often-criminal fashion) discovered the deserted ''Patriot'' and one of them carried the painting and clothing ashore, giving it to a female suitor. Years later, a physician caring for the now-elderly woman noticed the unusually expensive oil painting in the Nag's Head shack and it was supposedly confirmed to have belonged to the Alston family. The detail of the painting in Mrs. Sprague's story appears to be derived from a separate legend that first appeared in print in 1878.<ref>Cote, pg. 312</ref> In 1869, Dr. William G. Pool treated Mrs. Polly Mann for an ailment; in payment she gave him a portrait of a young woman which she claimed her first husband had discovered on board a wrecked ship during the War of 1812. Pool became convinced the portrait was of Theodosia Burr Alston, and contacted members of her family, some of whom agreed, though Pool conceded "they cannot say positively if it was her."<ref>Cote, pg. 315.</ref> None of them had ever seen Theodosia in life. The only person who had actually known Theodosia that Pool contacted was Mary Alston Pringle, Theodosia's sister-in-law. To his disappointment, she could not recognize the painting as one of Theodosia.<ref>Cote, pgs. 315-316</ref>
* A popular (though very improbable) local story in [[Alexandria, Virginia]], suggests that Theodosia Burr Alston may have been the Mysterious Female Stranger who died in Alexandria at Gadsby's Tavern on October 14, 1816. She was buried in St. Paul's Cemetery with a gravestone inscription that begins: "To the memory of a / FEMALE STRANGER / whose mortal sufferings terminated / on the 14th day of October 1816 / Aged 23 years and 8 months."
* A less romantic analysis of the known facts has led some scholars to conclude that the ''Patriot'' was probably wrecked by a storm off Cape Hatteras. Logbooks from the blockading British fleet report a severe storm which began off the Carolina coast in the afternoon of January 2, 1813, and continued into the next day. James L. Michie, an archaeologist from South Carolina, by studying its course has concluded that the ''Patriot'' was likely just north of Cape Hatteras when the storm was at its fiercest. "If the ship managed to escape this battering, which continued until midnight," he has said, "it then faced near hurricane-force winds in the early hours of Sunday. Given this knowledge, the ''Patriot'' probably sank between 6 p.m. Saturday [January 2] and 8 a.m. Sunday [January 3]."<ref>Richard Cote, ''Theodosia Burr Alston'', pgs. 272-74.</ref>
==Portrayals in Fiction==
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