She was born into a happy home.  Even if we had not the means of knowing something of the character of her mother, we might still infer that she must have possessed qualities singularly attractive to induce a man in the position of Burr to undertake the charge of a family at the outset of his career.  She was neither handsome nor young, nor had she even the advantage of good health.  A scar disfigured her face.  Burr,—­the brilliant and celebrated Burr,—­heir of an honored name, had linked his rising fortunes with an invalid and her boys.  The event most abundantly justified his choice, for in all the fair island of Manhattan there was not a happier family than his, nor one in which happiness was more securely founded in the diligent discharge of duty.  The twelve years of his married life were his brightest and best; and among the last words he ever spoke were a pointed declaration that his wife was the best woman and the finest lady he had ever known.  It was her cultivated mind that drew him to her.  “It was a knowledge of your mind,” he once wrote her,

“which first inspired me with a respect for that of your sex, and with some regret I confess, that the ideas you have often heard me express in favor of female intellectual power are founded in what I have imagined more than in what I have seen, except in you.”

In those days an educated woman was among the rarest of rarities.  The wives of many of our most renowned revolutionary leaders were surprisingly illiterate.  Except the noble wife of John Adams, whose letters form so agreeable an oasis in the published correspondence of the time, it would be difficult to mention the name of one lady of the revolutionary period who could have been a companion to the mind of a man of culture.  Mrs. Burr, on the contrary, was the equal of her husband in literary discernment, and his superior in moral judgment.  Her remarks, in her letters to her husband, upon the popular authors of the day, Chesterfield, Rousseau, Voltaire, and others, show that she could correct as well as sympathize with her husband’s taste.  She relished all of Chesterfield except the “indulgence,” which Burr thought essential.  She had a weakness for Rousseau, but was not deluded by his sentimentality.  She enjoyed Gibbon without stumbling at his fifteenth and sixteenth-chapters.  The home of Theodosia presents to us a pleasing scene of virtuous industry.  The master of the house, always an indomitable worker, was in the full tide of a successful career at the bar.  His two step-sons were employed in his office, and one of them frequently accompanied him in his journeys to distant courts as clerk or amanuensis.  No father could have been more generous or more thoughtful than he was for these fatherless youths, and they appeared to have cherished for him the liveliest affection.  Mrs. Burr shared in the labors of the office during the absence of her lord.  All the affairs of this happy family moved in harmony, for love presided at their board, inspired their exertions, and made them one.  One circumstance alone interrupted their felicity, and that was the frequent absence of Burr from home on business at country courts; but even these journeys served to call forth from all the family the warmest effusions of affection.