Theodosia Burr Alston: Portrait of a Prodigy

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Summary: A remarkable portrait of human strength and resilience
Review: Meticulously researched and superbly written, Theodosia by biographer Richard N. Cote is the fascinating and informative biography of Aaron Burr's singular and strong-willed daughter, Theodosia Burr Alston. Both she and her father embraced the philosophy of Englishwoman Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the founders of feminism in the late eighteenth century, perhaps best known for her then-radical advocacy of equal education for boys and girls. A remarkable portrait of human strength and resilience, as well as a highly recommended addition to Women's Studies and American Biography reading lists, Theodosia is an engaging and remarkable look into a formidable woman's life in the early nineteenth century.

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Summary: A Tapestry of Mystery and Intrigue
Review: Richard Côté does it again! "Theodosia Burr Alston: Portrait of a Prodigy," like Côté's "Mary's World: Love, War, and Family Ties in Nineteenth-Century Charleston," gives the reader an intimate look at the life of an early-American aristocrat. Both biographies are tales of strong women living in a man's world. Weaving a tapestry of mystery and intrigue, Richard Côté transports the reader to a bygone era in which love and betrayal are not always what they seem.

Do you think chaotic presidential elections are an aspect only of modern society? Think again. "Theodosia" reveals the bitter struggles -- both personal and political -- of Aaron Burr, Theodosia's father and the third vice president of the United States. After the legal and provoked duel in which Burr fatally wounded Alexander Hamilton, he was villainized, thereby bringing his daughter down into the quagmire with him.

Richard Côté has written the most comprehensive and unbiased biography about this mysterious lady. I found Theodosia to be a thoroughly good yarn that reads more like a contemporary novel than the historical biography that it is. For anyone with an interest in history, or anyone wanting a great read, I highly recommend this book.

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Summary: A true story so intriguing that it reads like fiction!
Review: Richard Côté has done it again! After thoroughly enjoying Mary's World, Côté's well-crafted, entertaining, and thought-provoking biography of a southern woman in the Civil War era, I decided to keep an eye out for his next historical project. And I'm glad I did. His presentation of the life of Theodosia Burr Alston, a woman long obscured by her famous father, is captivating and highly readable, and his original research sheds new light on her tragic, mysterious death.

Long before Monica, Watergate, and all of the other modern political scandals, there was Aaron Burr. Arguably the most controversial politician this country has ever seen, Burr was a self-serving womanizer who, while still serving as Vice President of the United States, actively colluded with a foreign power in a plot to invade Mexico and establish himself as its ruler. In 1783, his only legitimate child, daughter Theodosia, was born, and this fascinating, egotistical man focused his overweening ambition on raising her to be a superwoman-a true prodigy for her age. Following the tenets of early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, Burr took a radical and scandalous approach to educating his daughter. He was preparing her to be an empress. With this unique biography of a woman ahead of her time, Richard Côté has successfully met the challenge of bringing Theodosia out from her father's shadow and establishing her as an awesome person in her own right.

Rating:
Summary: A Tapestry of Mystery and Intrigue
Review: Richard Côté does it again! "Theodosia Burr Alston: Portrait of a Prodigy," like Côté's "Mary's World: Love, War, and Family Ties in Nineteenth-Century Charleston," gives the reader an intimate look at the life of an early-American aristocrat. Both biographies are tales of strong women living in a man's world. Weaving a tapestry of mystery and intrigue, Richard Côté transports the reader to a bygone era in which love and betrayal are not always what they seem.

Do you think chaotic presidential elections are an aspect only of modern society? Think again. "Theodosia" reveals the bitter struggles -- both personal and political -- of Aaron Burr, Theodosia's father and the third vice president of the United States. After the legal and provoked duel in which Burr fatally wounded Alexander Hamilton, he was villainized, thereby bringing his daughter down into the quagmire with him.

Richard Côté has written the most comprehensive and unbiased biography about this mysterious lady. I found Theodosia to be a thoroughly good yarn that reads more like a contemporary novel than the historical biography that it is. For anyone with an interest in history, or anyone wanting a great read, I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: A Tapestry of Mystery and Intrigue
Review: Richard Côté does it again! "Theodosia Burr Alston: Portrait of a Prodigy," like Côté's "Mary's World: Love, War, and Family Ties in Nineteenth-Century Charleston," gives the reader an intimate look at the life of an early-American aristocrat. Both biographies are tales of strong women living in a man's world. Weaving a tapestry of mystery and intrigue, Richard Côté transports the reader to a bygone era in which love and betrayal are not always what they seem.

Do you think chaotic presidential elections are an aspect only of modern society? Think again. "Theodosia" reveals the bitter struggles -- both personal and political -- of Aaron Burr, Theodosia's father and the third vice president of the United States. After the legal and provoked duel in which Burr fatally wounded Alexander Hamilton, he was villainized, thereby bringing his daughter down into the quagmire with him.

Richard Côté has written the most comprehensive and unbiased biography about this mysterious lady. I found Theodosia to be a thoroughly good yarn that reads more like a contemporary novel than the historical biography that it is. For anyone with an interest in history, or anyone wanting a great read, I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: history , real, honest and fascinating.......
Review: Richard N. Cote has stripped away the fallacies and fictional accounts surrounding Theodosia Burr Alston's life, creating an astonishing portrait of a young woman raised to be an Empress of her own country. Aaron Burr raised his daughter in a unique fashion, providing her an educational and experiential background that rivaled the most well educated men of her time. In fact, Cote successfully argues that Aaron Burr and his daughter, Theodosia, "became the center of each other's universe". They were to turn to each other with an intimacy and openess whenever life's road became rough.
Aaron Burr's life is carefully examined and analyzed. His goals, his choices and his actions to pursue and achieve his own ends are revealing and startling in their self centered designs. He pictured himself a man of grand ambitions and his daughter was a major "chess piece" in helping him achieve his vision. His relationship to his daughter, Theodosia, is so closely interwoven with his personal goals, that it would be nearly impossible to discuss one without the other.
While this is an historical account, which is extremely well documented, this work is not only informative but extremely fascinating and intriguing as well. Cote has gone an extra step in crafting this work. The backdrop of Theodosia's story is the tumultuous political atmosphere of her father's era and Cote misses no opportunity to provide the reader insight into these events, giving them a reality and clarity that is remarkably current.
Cote has also included many of the fallacies and fictional accounts of Theodosia's life, debunking the myths as he goes along, but creating, in the same method, a deep human appeal to see and attempt to understand the true Theodosia and the nature of her relationship with her father and those around her.
This is an amazingly readable, historically well documented account of a previously misunderstood young woman and her father that will open both your heart and your mind.

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Summary: The real story about Theodosia and her father, Aaron Burr
Review: Richard N. Cote, the author of this biography of Aaron Burr's daughter certainly did meticulous research. Add to that his skill as a storyteller, and this fascinating woman's short and sad life becomes real. It's not just her story, however, that comes alive. It is the story of the early days of America. The author traces her roots back to the 13 colonies, adding to the background of this family and its place in history. Living during those times meant living with medical problems and risking death from a wide variety of causes. For example, two of Aaron Burr's relatives died as a result of smallpox vaccinations.

Aaron Burr, a vice president of the United States under Thomas Jefferson, is known primarily for his duel with Alexander Hamilton. After that he fell into disfavor and had grandiose dreams of invading Mexico and making himself emperor. He later spent time in exile and finally returned to the United States to live to a ripe old age.

Burr had grand plans for his daughter Theodosia, his only child born in 1783. Unlike the women in her generation, he had her educated as boys were then. By the time she was 11, she was studying classical literature and speaking French. That's around the time her mother died and she took on the responsibility of running her father's New York home. She was only 18 when she married Joseph Alston, a South Carolina planter. Soon afterwards her son was born. The birth, however, was a difficult one and for the rest of her life, she was in constant pain.

The book centers on the relationship between Aaron Burr and his daughter. They were extremely close and their letters reveal that he even would write to her about his amorous adventures. After her marriage, they visited often, usually for months at a time. Transportation was difficult in those days. It took weeks to travel from South Carolina to New York. Even a sea voyage between these two places took five or six days. It was on one of those trips, when Theodosia was only 29 years old, sickly and mourning the recent death of her 10-year-old son from a fever, that she was lost at sea. It was a tragedy whose mystery still haunts history. There are rumors of pirates and her having to walk a plank. But nothing was ever proved.

I loved this book, looked forward to picking it up each night. It brought me to an age very different from the world we live in today. It was just as complex though, given the context of the times. There were intrigues and war and disease. And there was love and pain and loss. I also felt I got to know both Aaron Burr and Theodosia as more than just historical figures. And my understanding of American history sure was enriched. I thank Mr. Cote for writing this book and making a major contribution by preserving this story. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: The character of this remarkable woman shines in this meticulously researched biography. She is brilliant, courageous - a worthy role model. Every chapter is a lively history lesson that is easily absorbed. I would like to make a pilgrimage to all the places pictured in the book where she lived and visited. My husband loved the book, too. If we think we have bizarre political shenanigans now, just see what they were doing in the 1800's! Those founding fathers were a randy bunch!

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Summary: History Meets Legend
Review: The story of the promising but brief life of Vice president Aaron Burr's only legitimate child, Theodosia, is a sad tale of a promising future that was stymied by ill health and tragically severed by her mysterious disappearance at sea.

Born in 1783, beautiful Theodosia Burr was unique in her time. Because of her father, she received a man's advanced education along the lines suggested by the visionary English feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft. After the death of her mother when Theodosia was 11, she took her mother's place as hostess of Burr's New York mansion. There, as a teenager, she entertained the elite of American and Continental society. Burr almost regretted teaching his daughter to think so freely when she chose to marry [for love] a college-educated rice planter from the South.

The book quotes from letters exchanged between father and daughter, and allows these two to speak in their own voices, revealing the truth about the vice president, and his controlling, but conversely, supportive relationship with his daughter. The intense and sometimes bizarre bond between Aaron and Theodosia is fully explored with all of its psychological implications, and the symptoms of Theodosia's ill health that tragically stymied her potential are analyzed from a modern medical point of view. The treatment of the conjecture that has since surrounded Theodosia's disappearance while she sailed from South Carolina to New York during the War of 1812 is addressed in fascinating detail, unraveling the tangled web of myth and mystery.

Women in history have been ignored for far too long, but Richard N. Côté's meticulously researched biography of this amazing woman fully explores the facts of her life while impartially discussing the myths, allowing the reader to decide the truth behind the legend of the life of Theodosia Burr Alston.

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Summary: Couldn't do my work because of it!
Review: The story of Theodosia is so unbelievable and so magnetic, I couldn't stop reading it in order to do my work.

I set the type for Theodosia, and it was one of my toughest typesetting jobs because, as I laid out the pages ... I kept getting caught by the story.

I've always had this interest in Aaron Burr that I never followed up on. Now ... I am STILL just amazed by the tales recounted in Theodosia. He (Burr) was amazing. She (Theodosia) was amazing. And unless you already know their story very well, you will be blown away by what you learn -- and the learning is great fun, every step.