On December 31, 1812, 29-year-old Theodosia Burr Alston boarded the schooner Patriot in Georgetown, South Carolina, to visit her father, former U.S. vice president Aaron Burr, in New York. Still grieving the recent death of her young son, she was heading toward a long-awaited reunion. The voyage should have taken less than a week but the ship never arrived.
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