All the Presidents Wives 7

RACHEL DONELSON ROBARDS JACKSON

Born:

Born near the Banister River, about ten miles from present-day Chatham, Virginia, Pittsylvania County, in 1767; the exact date of her birth was not recorded at the time, but has been invariably attributed to the month of June, with some sources designating the date as 15 June

Father:

Colonel John Donelson, born 1718, Somerset Count, Maryland, hunter, surveyor, foundry owner, Revolutionary War soldier; a member of the Virginia Assembly, co-founder of Nashville, Tennessee, died by murder in 1786, assailants unknown on return from Virginia to Tennessee

Mother:

Rachel Stockley Donelson , born in Accomac County, Virginia, 1730, married there in 1744; died, Nashville, Tennessee, 1801

Ancestry:

Scottish, Irish, Welsh, English; It appears that Rachel Jackson's paternal great-grandfather was Patrick Donelson, who was born in Scotland about 1670. He had a son named John who settled in Maryland. His wife was Catherine Davis of Welsh ancestry. They had a son John who married one Rachael Stockley, daughter of Alexander Stockley and Jane Matthews: the Stockley family allegedly originated in Ulster, Northern Ireland, and the Matthews from England. Both Rachel Jackson's father and paternal grandfather are listed in the DAR Patriot Index.

Birth Order and Siblings:

Tenth of eleven children, seven brothers, three sisters;

Alexander Donelson (1749-1785); Mary Donelson Caffrey (1751-?); Catherine Donelson Hutchings (1752-1835); Stockley Donelson (1753-1804); Jane Donelson Hay (1757-1834); John Donelson (1755-1830); William Donelson (1756-1820); Samuel Donelson (1758-1804); Severn Donelson (1763 or 1773 -1818); Leven Donelson (1765-?)

Physical Appearance:

Short, brown hair, brown eyes

Religious Affiliation:

Presbyterian

Education:

There is no extant record of Rachel Jackson having received a formal education. In light of the fact that she spent the first twelve years of her life in a relatively rural part of Virginia, and there was not a tradition of educating young women beyond the basics of reading and writing. She was taught housekeeping duties such as sewing, spinning, weaving, embroidery, as well as preserving foods, overseeing the kitchens and generally managing the plantation life, including direction of the slaves' duties. She played musical instruments and was an accomplished horsewoman. Although most of her correspondence was destroyed in an 1834 fire at the Hermitage, her extant letters show that while her spelling and grammar were poor, she intelligently conveyed her thoughts. In later life, most of her reading was of the Bible and other religious works, yet she also had an extensive collection of poetry.

Occupation before Marriage:

Rachel left Pittsylvania County at age 12 when her parents moved to what would later become part of Tennessee. The Donelson family and other families totally about 600 people, were led by her father, transported on 40 flatboats and canoes for almost 1000 miles from Fort Patrick Henry along the Holston River to the Cumberland River and the new settlement of Fort Nashborough, later to be named Nashville. The Donelsons were on the largest boat, Adventure. Settling in April 24, 1780, the Donelson clans were among the first and most prominent settlers of Nashville. RachelJackson's siblings and her group of nephews and nieces, totaling 63, would dominate the city's business, civic and political power base for generations. They removed first to nearby Mansker's Station, and then to Harrodsburg, Kentucky because of serious threats of attacks on white settlers by Cherokee and Chickasaw native peoples in the region.

Marriage

First marriage:
18 years old to Lewis Robards (born 1758, Harrodsburg, Mercer County, Kentucky; died, 15, April, 1814, Harrodsburg, Kentucky), land owner, speculator, on 1 March, 1785, at Lincoln County, Kentucky. Lewis and Rachel Robards lived in Harrodsburg with his elderly mother for over three years, until the late summer or early fall of 1788. Divorce: The ultimate divorce of Rachel Jackson from her first husband would come to shatter all precedent in presidential history. It was the first time that such a deeply personal event would be used against a presidential candidate in a campaign and it was also the first large public consideration of the conceptual ideal of what kind of personal background a First Lady should ideally possess. It thus unwittingly played one of the first and important public debates in the history of First Ladies. Lewis Robards and his defenders would claim that his former wife had shamelessly flirted and that he asked her brother to remove Rachel from her marital home, but that he later sough reconciliation. Upon his return to Nashville, they claimed he found her in an inappropriately close relationship with Andrew Jackson, a circuit lawyer boarding with the Donelsons who then eloped with her in Natchez, Mississippi in an illegal marriage. This resulted in his seeking and gaining a divorce. In contrast, the Donelsons and Jacksons claimed that Robards had physically abused Rachel and that she ran first to her mother's home and then - when word came that Robards was coming to take her back to their Kentucky home - fled for fear of her life to Natchez with friends, a married couple, all of them guided and protected by Jackson. They further claim that when Jackson returned to Nashville alone that he was told that Robards had boasted that he had successfully processed a divorce from Rachel, thus leaving her open to marry Jackson. The Jackson defenders would suggest that Robards had purposely misled them so that if Andrew and Rachel Jackson did marry and live together that it would make the union an adulterous one that was all the proof needed for Robards to then gain a divorce. The Jackson evidence was weakened by the fact that no legal marriage of theirs could be legitimized in then-Spanish-ruled Mississippi because they were Protestant and only Catholic wedding ceremonies were recognized as legal unions. Robards did follow the law by first obtaining a required legislative grant to file a divorce. He then did so based on the fact that Rachel had openly committed adultery, and the divorce was granted on TK to him, she found to be guilty of abandonment as well. The Jacksons remarried legally in Tennessee, but the incident had made Rachel Jackson a bigamist and adulterer.
*Rachel Robards Jackson was the first of three First Ladies who marriages previous to that of a President had ended in divorce.

Second marriage:
26 years old, to Andrew Jackson (born March 15, 1767 in Waxhaws, North Carolina - died June 08, 1845, at the "Hermitage," in Davidson, Tennessee) on January 7, 1794, Nashville, Tennessee at the Donelson home. For the three years following their "Natchez" wedding, Andrew Jackson and Rachel Robards had lived with her mother and the Donelson clan in Nashville. They continued to make their home there until TK, when they began construction of what would be the first building to later comprise their famous Hermitage plantation.

Children:

two adopted sons:

Andrew Jackson, Jr. born, December 04, 1808 in Davidson, Tennessee, died 17 April, 1865 in Hermitage, Davidson Co., Davidson, Tennessee; he was actually Rachel Jackson's nephew, one of a pair of twins born to her brother Severn Donelson; since both of his parents were alive at the time of his adoption, the reason he was given to them is not clear; Lyncoya Jackson (c1811-1828), an American Indian child found by Jackson on a battlefield with his dead mother and raised by the Jacksons from the age of two.

Legal guardian for six boys and two girls: John Samuel Donelson (?-1817), DanielDonelson (1801-1863) and AndrewJacksonDonelson (1799- 1871) were all nephews of Rachel Jackson, the sons of her brother Samuel Donelson who died in 1804. The last of the three, another namesake of the president served as his private secretary in the White House, and married his cousin, Rachel Jackson's niece Emily, the daughter of her brother John Donelson; Andrew Jackson Hutchings (1812-1841), the orphaned grandson of Rachel Jackson's sister Catherine Donelson Hutchings; Caroline Butler, Eliza Butler, Edward Butler and Anthony Butler, children of Revolutionary War General Edward Butler, who named Jackson as guardian to the children and who often came to live at the Hermitage following their father's death.

Occupation after Marriage:

Through her husband's public career in the military, business and politics, Rachel Jackson largely remained at home, at the Hermitage Plantation, supervising the large number of slave families that carried out the household tasks, farming and maintenance of the vast acres. Jackson was a lawyer, circuit judge, land speculator, farmer and businessman. He later moved into politics, was a soldier of national renown especially for his victory over the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Rachel Jackson greatly resented his frequent absences and their lengthy separations, once admonishing him, "Do not, my beloved husband, let the love of country, fame and honor make you forget that you have me. Without you I would think them all empty shadows. You will say this is not the language of a patriot, but it is the language of a faithful wife, one I know you esteem and love."

Her life, in direct relation to the scandal of her bigamy, caused Rachel Jackson to withdraw from society’s glare. Although she confessed that she preferred to confine her public appearances to religious services, she joined her husband during his most important political endeavors to Pensacola, Florida, New Orleans, Louisiana and Washington, D.C. She was in the capital for the House vote in the contested 1824 election and despite what some considered a backwoods manner marked by her smoking a long-stem clay pipe, she was befriended by the urbane First Lady Elizabeth Monroe. According to family tradition, as a child, RachelJackson had been brought to the homes of GeorgeWashington, ThomasJefferson, PatrickHenry and Richard Henry Lee, all of whom were colleagues in Virginia politics with her father, a member of the House of Burgesses. She had grown up in a world of politics and was thus comfortable engaging in conversation with and welcoming as her lengthy houseguests the national political figures associated with Jackson. She also hosted regular gatherings for Jackson's political supporters.

As for her personal influence on Andrew Jackson, there are several accounts that she was able with a small gesture or word to shut down his impulse to respond to an insult or a political remark with which he disagreed, thus saving him from creating more of a long-term complication for his career. During Jackson's short stint as Governor of Florida, the increasingly religious fervent RachelJackson persuaded him to declare edicts banishing alcohol sale and consumption on Sundays. He also resigned the governorship "as Mrs.Jackson is anxious to return home." Senator Thomas Hart Benton stated that she also had "a faculty - a rare one of retaining names and titles in a throng of visitors, addressing each one appropriately…"

Much of Rachel Jackson's focus remained fixed on the estate that would become part of her husband's legend. From a cotton farm property he bought in 1804 with a loghouse he had decorated with French wallpaper, Andrew Jackson's famous plantation, the Hermitage evolved; in its earliest stages RachelJackson had a direct role in designing and then managing it. The acreage, outbuildings, and main house, along with the number of slaves bought to maintain it, grew over the next decade and a half. By 1821, an 8-room, two-story brick mansion was the Jackson home. In the main stair hall, RachelJackson selected scenic wallpapers imported from France that depicted themes from Greek mythology. The mansion, however, continued to grow and evolve, especially after Jackson became President; thus, Rachel Jackson never knew the famous white-columned southern plantation that was to later become the familiar vision of the Hermitage.

Presidential Campaign and Inauguration:

Early in the 1828 presidential race, the story of Rachel Jackson's former status as an adulterer, bigamist and divorcee was used against her husband by the press supporting his rival for the presidency, John Quincy Adams. These included an anti-Jackson pamphlet called Truth's Advocate, printed in Cincinnati, and articles in the St. Louis Post Dispatch,National Banner and Nashville Whig. One editorial asked, "Ought a convicted adulteress and her paramour husband to be placed in the highest offices of this free and Christian land?" Many of Jackson's detractors claimed he was not fit for the presidency based partially on his professional and personal behavior stemming from the circumstances of the Robards divorce and his marriage.

The Jackson campaign organized what was called the "Nashville Central Committee," the first political public relations effort to clarify his "domestic relations in reference to his fitness for the presidency." Numerous pro-Jackson orators, like Thomas Kennedy made stump speeches that avoided the details of the Robards divorce but attacked the lack of chivalry and "abominable" conduct of using the "affectionate partner" of Jackson for political purposes. The Nashville Central Committee produced a thirty-page booklet prepared and written by Robert Coleman Foster. It incorporated testimony from many different sources including a large contribution from Jackson's longtime friend, law partner and campaign contributor Judge John Overton, who had also known the Robards family. Nevertheless Rachel Jackson's controversial marital history was sensationalized in the opposition press that year.

Such widespread dissemination of her personal life at a time when women considered such matters to be exclusively private created enormous shame for her; one historian recounted that she spent much of the campaign crying and depressed, which only further stressed a strained heart condition that had first manifested itself in 1825. There were even later claims that she had personally encountered public degradation by overhearing taunts about her in a Nashville shop. A factor that contributed to her severe stress that is often eclipsed by the dramatic impact of the campaign was the sudden June 1828 death of her sixteen year old son Lyncoya, then working at the Hermitage.

While she was later quoted as stating after her husband's election that she would "rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than live in that palace in Washington," she also wrote a statement of spirited self-defense to a Jackson campaign manager declaring her innocence against the enemies of her husband who she said had "dipped their pens in wormwood [poison]." There was a concerted effort by the Jackson campaign managers to encourage women whose husbands had supported Jackson or who were western to arrange to be in Washington, D.C. for the Inauguration as a concerted show of support for Rachel Jackson. Calling for women to organize a public action with such political intent was unprecedented. She intended to attend the Inauguration and had even purchased a gown and white slippers for the traditional ball. Despite this, her physical and mental health had so drastically deteriorated that by the fall she had a near fatal heart attack. She seemed to recover but died suddenly three days before Christmas. The president-elect was so stunned that he held her dead body in hopes that she could be revived.

Death:

61 years old The Hermitage Plantation, Nashville, Tennessee 22 December, 1828

Burial:

The Hermitage Plantations garden Nashville, Tennessee