Alston's mother was the widow of Jacques Marcus Prevost (1736-1781), a British Army officer who settled in New York City; she had five other children from that marriage and was nine years Burr's senior.

She applied herself to English in the form of letters to her father, which were responded to promptly; the replies included detailed criticism.

By the age of fourteen, she began to serve as hostess at Richmond Hill, Burr's stately home in what is now Greenwich Village.

Alston wrote letters to Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin and to Dolley Madison in an effort to secure a smooth return for her father.

The resulting anguish affected her health, to the point of preventing her from traveling to New York upon her father's return from Europe in July 1812.

Several months after the War of 1812 broke out, Alston's husband was sworn in as governor of South Carolina on December 10.

The schooner's captain, William Overstocks, desired to make a rapid run to New York with his cargo; it is likely that the ship was laden with the proceeds from its privateering raids.

The most enduring was that the Patriot had been captured by a pirate, and that something had occurred near Cape Hatteras, notorious for wreckers who lured ships into danger.

But the rumors persisted long after his death, and after around 1850, more substantial "explanations" of the mystery surfaced, usually alleging to be from the deathbed confessions of sailors and from criminals about to be executed.

Logbooks from the blockading British fleet report a severe storm that began off the Carolina coast in the afternoon of January 2, 1813 and continued into the next day.

"If the ship managed to escape this battering, which continued until midnight," Michie said, "it then faced near hurricane-force winds in the early hours of Sunday.