Three Mysterious Portraits (February 1966 | Volume: 17, Issue: 2)

Three Mysterious Portraits

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February 1966 | Volume 17, Issue 2

Around almost everyone—and everything—connected with the Burr conspiracy, time and flourishing legend have drawn a cloak of mystery. This is particularly true of three supporting characters: Burr’s beloved daughter, Theodosia, and Harman and Margaret Blennerhassett, the couple who were charmed into contributing much of their fortune to the little colonel’s grandiose schemes. The mystery continues to cling even to the surviving portraits reproduced above and on the opposite page.

On December 30, 1812, the American privateer Patriot put out from Charleston, South Carolina, for New York, her guns and a rich cargo of booty concealed below decks under sacks of rice. In her cabin was a distinguished passenger, Theodosia Burr Alston—desperately ill and still grieving over the death of her little son—on her way to visit her father. To get the Patriot through the British blockade, Theodosia’s husband, Governor Joseph Alston, had given the captain a letter addressed to the commander of the British fleet, calling upon his gentlemanly gallantry to let the lady pass. The ruse worked. On New Year’s Day, 1813. when the privateer was stopped by a British warship off Cape Hatteras, the letter was produced and the Patriot was waved on her way. The Englishmen may have been the last to see her company alive: that night a violent storm blew up and the Patriot was never heard from again.

The scene shifts now to a dirty little shack in the hamlet of Nags Head on Cape Hatteras, that traditional graveyard of ships off the North Carolina coast. The year is 1869, and the shack’s owner, a poor, sick old “banks” woman named Mrs. Mann, has called in Dr. William G. Pool of nearby Elizabeth City. Having no cash to pay his fee, she offers him an oil painting of a young and beautiful lady whose approximate age, auburn hair, and piercing eyes give her a strong resemblance to Theodosia Alston. With the portrait goes a story. The picture—and some dresses evidently made for a gentlewoman—had been given to Mrs. Mann many years before by her lover, a young Hatteras fisherman; they represented part of his share in the loot from a deserted sailing vessel found driving toward Nags Head one morning early in 1813 bunks made up and table laid, rudder set and sails drawing. No vessel other than the Patriot and no gentlewoman other than Theodosia were known to be missing as a result of the terrible storm. Was the lady in the picture Theodosia? Many, including Dr. John E. Stillwell, a long-time collector of Burr portraits, have thought so, and have speculated that she was taking the picture to New York as a present for her father. Others are not so sure.

But how did the lady meet her death? In the half century following the Patriot ’s disappearance, there were at least seven reports of deathbed statements by