“Theodosia Burr Alston was on that ship, trying to reach her father, the infamous Aaron Burr, in New York. She’d sailed from her home in South Carolina during the war with the British. The soldiers let her ship pass because she had a special letter from her husband, the governor of South Carolina. But it might have been better for her if the British soldiers had captured her. Because right after that, a terrible gale hit and the Patriot was assumed lost at sea.”
“Was Theodosia Burr killed in the terrible gale?” The little girl’s eyes were wide in her pretty, tanned face. “Or was she killed by pirates?”
Despite the fact that all of these children had heard the tragic tale of Theo Burr the way most kids on the mainland listened to “The Three Little Pigs,” there were always questions.
“Dae, maybe you could take this question.” Max smiled at me.
It was unusual for him to step out of his tale. Max was a master storyteller and loved the tales of the Outer Banks’ dark past—pirates, marauders and gold—better than anyone else I knew.
“Miss Dae is the mayor of Duck, North Carolina, our hometown,” Max continued, probably trying to prompt a response from me.
I was fairly sure the kids knew who I was since this was Walk to Story Time with the Mayor Wednesday, but I played along.
Twenty pairs of eyes all turned and stared at me as though they’d never seen me before. I smiled back (my big, friendly mayor smile) and jumped right into it. “Well, kids, we all know the terrible things that can happen at sea.”
“Pirates!” one little boy blurted out, grinning despite his teacher’s reprimand for speaking out of turn.
“Hurricanes!” another little girl (I recognized her as the granddaughter of Vergie Smith, the Duck postmaster) yelled out, causing a loud rash of talking.
Both teachers that had accompanied me to the Duck Historical Museum stepped in at that point to calm the group. When the kids were quiet again, they nodded at me to continue.
“In this case, Theo Burr wasn’t killed by the pirates who attacked her ship or by the terrible gale that came up that January.” I glanced at Max to see if he wanted me to go any further.
All the kids had already turned back, owl-eyed, to face Max again. The two teachers with me were probably as anxious to hear the tale continue as the children. Even as adults, we never tired of the story.
Those of us who grew up in Duck know about how our Banker (our term for the people who lived here) ancestors survived by picking up cargo from ships that went down close to the Outer Banks. Be it pirates or storms, they didn’t call this area of the world the Graveyard of the Atlantic for nothing.
Max began his tale again. His curly brown hair and cheerful red face that matched his red suspenders seemed unlikely for a man who could impart such gloom and doom. He’d been the curator of the museum for as long as there had been a museum. He knew every ship’s relic, barnacle and cannonball better than most people knew what was in their closet at home.
“It’s true. Theo Burr wasn’t killed by the pirates who captured her ship. But she was forced to walk the plank, and the pirates thought she was dead just like the rest of the Patriot’s crew.”
The voice and inflection were perfect. The children were wrapped up in the story just as I had been at their age—and was now. I could remember sitting on this floor listening as Max told his tales of woe and privateering with style and sufficient substance to cause fear to creep into my heart.
For other children of this age, this might seem too frightening, but Duck children knew the terrible truth of the past. They respected it and learned to live with it.
“But you said Theo Burr wasn’t dead,” the first little girl said accusingly.
“Aye, and she wasn’t,” Max confirmed with a squinted left eye. “Old Frank Burdick, the pirate, confessed on his deathbed that he had held the plank for Theo Burr. He said the crew and passengers of the Patriot were all murdered. The pirates plundered the ship, then abandoned her under full sail.”
“But what about Theo Burr?” the little girl demanded. “Was she dead or not?”
“People tell different tales. But an old Banker story says that Theo made it to shore around Nags Head. She was picked up by a family who made their living salvaging from wrecked ships. They say she couldn’t tell them who she was but that she carried a small portrait that was later identified as one Theo Burr had painted for her father.”
“But did she die?” a little boy asked in a shaky voice. “My dad says her ghost walks the beaches looking for her dead baby. She has to be dead to be a ghost, right?”
Max laughed and pulled at his suspenders like he always did. “That’s right, young man. But that was a long time ago. No matter what, Theo Burr would be dead by now. But there are plenty of people who believe she lived the rest of her life on the Outer Banks. They say she couldn’t remember who she was and started a new family with a man from Duck.”
“So she is a ghost and walks around looking for her dead baby,” Vergie’s granddaughter said in awe. “What about the pirate gold?”
“She didn’t have any pirate gold,” Max replied with infinite patience. “But the real treasure is finding out if Theo Burr really lived here the rest of her life. If she did, one of you might be related to her. Now that would be something, wouldn’t it?”
The kids looked around at each other. One little boy stuck his fingers in his ears and shook his head. “Tell us about the curse of the pirate captain,” he pleaded. “Talk about his ghost coming back to look for his hidden pirate treasure.”
They all agreed with that idea, and Max told the story about Rafe Masterson’s curse, which had been a legend in Duck for more than two hundred years.
I left the group to go over and help Agnes, Max’s wife, who owned the Beach Bakery. She always brought treats on story time days. She was unwrapping brownies and cupcakes while I took out all the tiny boxes of juice.
“He loves when the kids come,” she said with a smile at her husband. “He worries they’ll forget, you know? They don’t teach our history in school anymore.”
“I don’t think he has to worry about that. I’m sure everyone over the age of twelve can recite the tale of Theo Burr word for word. I know I can.”
“But things are different now with all the gaming and such.” Agnes sighed as the last of the cupcakes was laid out. “There might be a time when all of the legends are lost. I hate to think of it, but sometimes I can feel it sliding away.”
I agreed. With corporations fighting to see who could buy out more of the older homes in Duck for condominiums, I didn’t know if there was hope for the future or the past.
But not today. The Duck Historical Museum might be small, but you couldn’t stand here without feeling like you were in the heart of Duck, past and present.
I glanced down at the floor and saw a gold coin. Probably from the display in the glass case across the room, I thought. Agnes had already gone to tell the kids it was snack time. Max was still answering questions about ghosts and pirates.
I bent over, picked up the coin and flipped it over in my hand. It was a dull gold, burnished by sea and sand. Unlike the recovered treasure often shown in movies, none of the old gold that washed up here was ever shiny.
I knew the tale of how the Duck Museum came to have that pirate treasure as well as I knew the tale of Theo Burr. This one was closer to home. Max had found the gold early one morning. It was in an old wood chest that had washed up on the Atlantic side of the island. This was years before, when Max was a young man. He’d received a finder’s fee from the government and had donated the gold to the museum.