Houston Chronicle by Joe Holley July 13, 2019
Dear Theodosia, what to say to you?
You have my eyes
You have your mother’s name. . .Lyrics from “Dear Theodosia,†a song from the musical “Hamiltonâ€RIVER’S END, BRAZORIA COUNTY — For Texans, maybe the story begins where it might have ended. In mystery.
The year was 1813 and, as the story goes, a Karankawa brave discovered a foundered ship, her keel splintered, at the mouth of the Rio San Bernardo, today’s San Bernard River. Clambering aboard, he discovered debris and bodies. Hearing a faint voice calling for help, in English, he followed the sound to a small white woman chained by one ankle to a bulkhead. He freed the woman and carried her ashore.
As the Dallas Morning News told the story more than a century later, the woman was able to tell her rescuer what happened. (The brave is supposed to have learned English from a hermit who arrived in southeast Texas in the early 1800s and lived among the Karankawa.) She had been a passenger on a ship, the woman recounted, and had been captured by pirates off Cape Hatteras, N.C. Weeks later, her captors’ ship was hit by a storm while en route to Galveston and drifted into Matagorda Bay. She was the lone survivor.
The woman gave her rescuer a locket she wore around her neck and begged him to take it to those who spoke her language. Then she died and was laid to rest near the mouth of the San Bernard. Sometime later, white men who knew the Karankawa noticed the locket he wore. Inside was a painting of a young man holding an infant son. Engraved on the back was the name “Theodosia.â€
Those who heard the story and believed it had no doubt about the identity of the unfortunate young woman. She had to be the missing Theodosia Burr Alston. If Amelia Earhart is the 20th century’s most tantalizing missing-person mystery, Theodosia Burr Alston is the 19th-century equivalent.
More:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/columnists/native-texan/article/Did-Aaron-Burr-s-dear-Theodosia-walk-the-14091198.php
