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Aaron Burr

1756–1836 · 80 years Tier II

Orphaned at two, graduated Princeton at 16, died deep in debt

Portrait of Aaron Burr — John Vanderlyn — 1802 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Four deaths in thirteen months emptied the house he was born into. His father, a Presbyterian minister and the second president of the College of New Jersey, died in September 1757. His grandfather Jonathan Edwards, who had just taken over the same office, died the following March of a smallpox inoculation. His mother Esther died that April, his grandmother Sarah that October. Burr was two. A 21-year-old uncle took the boy in and beat him, and he ran away more than once. The college admitted him at 13 as a sophomore. He took his degree at 16, read law under Tapping Reeve at Litchfield, and enlisted in 1775 in time to march on Quebec with Benedict Arnold.

He chartered the Manhattan Company in 1799 to supply New York with water and used a clause in the charter to open a bank, then directed its credit to men who would vote his way. He tied Jefferson in the electoral count of 1800 and took the vice presidency instead. He shot Alexander Hamilton at Weehawken in July 1804, went west with a scheme nobody has fully explained, and stood trial for treason before John Marshall in 1807. BriefHistory carries that sequence and what it did to the law. This page is about the man carrying it.

He held that women were the intellectual equals of men, had his daughter Theodosia taught languages, music and how to shoot from horseback, and put a bill before the New York legislature that would have let women vote. It failed. In the same assembly he moved to abolish slavery outright, and he owned enslaved people while he moved it. By 1787 or earlier he had begun a relationship with Mary Emmons, a servant in his household who had reached America from Calcutta by way of Saint-Domingue, and fathered two children with her whom he never acknowledged. One of them, John Pierre Burr, became an agent of the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia. Acquaintances reported that Hamilton's death left Burr unmoved.

Two strokes finished him in a Staten Island boarding house on September 14, 1836, the day his divorce became final, and was buried near his father at Princeton owing more than he had. John Quincy Adams wrote a year later that Burr's friends would want the whole of that life buried in quiet oblivion. It was not. The historian Nancy Isenberg argues the villain was largely manufactured by his enemies and then copied down for two centuries. Lin-Manuel Miranda made him the narrator of a musical in 2015 and won its Burr a Tony. In 2018 the Aaron Burr Association, shown a DNA test, recognized Louisa and John Pierre as his children and set a headstone at John Pierre's grave.

Lifespan

15401700180019002030

Aaron Burr's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Bill to abolish slavery in New York law
Introduced as an assemblyman and defeated. He owned enslaved people at the time. 1785
Bill to give New York women the vote law
Submitted after his election to the legislature and defeated —
The Manhattan Company company
Chartered to pipe water, with a clause that let it become a bank 1799
Rules for the first Senate impeachment trial other
The procedures he set are largely still in use 1805
The Bastrop Tract settlement scheme other
40,000 leased acres on the Ouachita River, and the pretext for the treason charge 1806

Life in brief

with age at each point

April 7, 1758 aged 2 His mother dies, the last of four deaths in his household in 13 months His father, his grandfather Jonathan Edwards, his mother and his grandmother all died between September 1757 and October 1758.
1772 aged ~16 Takes his bachelor's degree at the College of New Jersey at 16 He had been admitted at 13, as a sophomore.
December 31, 1775 aged 19 Fights at Quebec as aide-de-camp to General Richard Montgomery
July 2, 1782 aged 26 Marries Theodosia Bartow Prevost She died in 1794 of cancer. Their daughter Theodosia was born in 1783.
March 4, 1801 aged 45 Sworn in as vice president after the deadlocked count of 1800
July 11, 1804 aged 48 Shoots Alexander Hamilton at Weehawken Indicted for murder in two states and never tried.
September 1, 1807 aged 51 Acquitted of treason in John Marshall's courtroom Arrested on February 19 in the Mississippi Territory and acquitted again on a misdemeanor charge immediately after.
1813 aged ~57 His daughter Theodosia is lost at sea aboard the schooner Patriot Her son had died of malaria the year before. Burr chose to believe it was a storm rather than pirates.
September 14, 1836 aged 80 Dies in a Staten Island boarding house after two strokes His divorce from Eliza Jumel was completed the same day. He died deeply in debt.