Rachel Jackson

Rachel, the daughter of Colonel John Donelson, a surveyor, and Rachel Stockley Donelson, enjoyed an excellent education for a woman living on the frontier. As a member of a prominent Virginia family, she met during her youth the future presidents of the United States George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. When Rachel was 13 she accompanied her family on a 1,000-mile (1,600-km), four-month trek through the Cherokee Nation to the Tennessee frontier, where the family settled briefly before moving to Kentucky.

Rachel was known as a friendly, vivacious young woman. When she was 17, she met Lewis Robards, whom she married on March 1, 1785. However, he proved a pathologically jealous and abusive husband who falsely accused Rachel of adultery despite having had adulterous relationships himself. The couple separated in 1788, and despite several attempted reconciliations, his fierce temper and violent behaviour convinced her to leave him permanently in 1790. Aided by the young lawyer Andrew Jackson, who had been boarding at her mother's house, Rachel journeyed to Natchez, Mississippi, to live with relatives. In 1790 Robards petitioned the Kentucky legislature to allow him to seek a divorce on the grounds of desertion, though he did not pursue the divorce for two more years. In 1791, hearing mistakenly that Robards had divorced her, Rachel married Andrew. Learning of this, Robards finally obtained the divorce in September 1793, on the grounds of adultery. In January 1794 Rachel and Andrew were married for a second time.

Andrew had reportedly threatened violence to Robards for slandering Rachel, and in 1806 he killed another man in a duel for impugning her reputation. In 1804 the Jacksons moved to the newly built Hermitage, a plantation near Nashville, Tennessee, that would remain their home for the rest of their lives. Although the couple had no children of their own, they adopted one of her nephews. During Andrew's frequent absences, which his military and political careers required, Rachel was solely responsible for managing the plantation.

A highly religious woman who, upon doctor's orders, smoked a corncob pipe as a purported cure for shortness of breath, she was considered unsophisticated and uneducated by genteel society. The object of constant ridicule and malicious rumours by Andrew's political opponents, Rachel was described by one newspaper as a “fat dumpling.” During Andrew's presidential bids in 1824 and 1828, his enemies circulated stories about Rachel's first marriage, claiming that Andrew was an adulterer and Rachel a bigamist. Scurrilous attacks were directed even at Andrew's mother, who was branded a “common prostitute.”

As Rachel was reluctantly preparing to move to Washington, D.C., following Andrew's electoral victory in 1828—she said that she “would rather be a door-keeper in the house of God than to live in that palace in Washington”—she died of a heart attack. She was buried on the grounds of the Hermitage on Christmas Eve in what was to be her inaugural gown. A young niece, Emily Donelson, became the surrogate first lady; after Emily's death in 1836, Sarah Yorke Jackson, the wife of Andrew Jackson, Jr., became the official White House hostess.

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