| Sources |
- [S874] Heritage Consulting, Millennium File, (Name: Ancestry.com Operations Inc; Location: Provo, UT, USA; Date: 2003;).
- [S110] Yates Publishing, U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900, (Name: Ancestry.com Operations Inc; Location: Provo, UT, USA; Date: 2004;), Source number: 15184.000; Source type: Electronic Database; Number of Pages: 1; Submitter Code: WAY.
- [S487] Ancestry.com, Rhode Island, Vital Extracts, 1636-1899, (Name: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.; Location: Provo, UT, USA; Date: 2014;).
- [S34] Ancestry.com, Find a Grave, (Name: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.; Location: Provo, UT, USA; Date: 2012;), Rachel Donelson Jackson BIRTH 15 Jun 1767 Pittsylvania County, Virginia, USA DEATH 22 Dec 1828 (aged 61) Nashville, Davidson County, Tennessee, USA BURIAL Jackson Family Cemetery Hermitage, Davidson County, Tennessee, USA MEMORIAL ID 19468.
Presidential First Lady. Though never in reality a First Lady, Rachel Jackson's mixup with her divorce and remarriage impacted and had a detrimental effect on her life and her husband, President Jackson until the day of his death. She was born Rachel Donelson in Virginia the fourth daughter from a total of twelve children. Her education was almost nonexistent and what she did receive was akin to what frontier women received: reading the bible and little else. Jackson met Rachael while lodging at her widowed mother's boarding house in Nashville, Tennessee and they were soon wed. However: after two years it came to light her divorce from a first marriage had not been decreed, only placed on the docket to be heard. In the eyes of the law, Rachel Jackson had committed bigamy by marrying. When the final decree of divorce was actually granted Andrew and Rachel remarried. Tales of their adultery and bigamy followed the couple as Jackson's career advanced in both politics and war. Two months prior to assuming the presidency, she was wearing the white dress purchased for her husband's inaugural ceremonies, only it had become her burial shroud. She had been in poor health for a number of years and a heart attack took her life. The president selected her own personal garden at the Hermitage, their estate outside Nashville, for her burial site. She was interred on Christmas Eve. President-elect Jackson was convinced that the strain of the personal attacks on her character was directly responsible for her demise. In his own words, "May god almighty forgive her murderers a I know she forgave them. I never Can." However, she was a heavy smoker and a corncob pipe was her trademark. Ten thousand people turned up for her funeral and those that could packed the large garden as the interment took place on Christmas Eve. Later he build a permanent temple made of limestone resembling a Greek styled gazebo over the grave. After serving two presidential terms, Andrew Jackson returned to the Hermitage. He never recovered from her loss. He carried around a miniature of her and at night placed it on his bedside table. He never remarried. Andrew visited the garden and Rachel's grave every evening. At the age of 78 years, Jackson died in his bedroom and was buried in the garden next to his wife. When the Hermitage was first built it was little more than a small cabin but it became a spacious and prosperous plantation with many slaves. The Jackson's did not have any children but adopted Rachel's nephews and gave him the name of Andrew Jackson, Jr. Upon the Presidents death he became the owner of the plantation. He allowed the property to become run down and was forced by debt and mismanagement to sell the property to the State of Tennessee which has restored the property to its former appearance. It is today open to the public and is an historic site.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/19468
- [S1849] Ancestry.com, Obituary of Rachel Donelson, (Name: Ancestry.com Operations Inc; Location: Provo, UT, USA; Date: 2006;), Newspaper: Toronto Star; Publication Date: 19 12 2004; Publication Place: Toronto, On, Can.
- [S46] Ancestry.com, Tennessee State Marriages, 1780-2002, (Name: Ancestry.com Operations Inc; Location: Provo, UT, USA; Date: 2008;).
- [S1850] Wikipedia: Andrew Jackson, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson.
Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the seventh President of the United States (1829–1837). He was born near the end of the colonial era, somewhere near the then-unmarked border between North and South Carolina, into a recently immigrated Scots-Irish farming family of relatively modest means. During the American Revolutionary War Jackson, whose family supported the revolutionary cause, acted as a courier. He was captured, at age 13, and mistreated by his British captors. He later became a lawyer. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and then to the U.S. Senate. In 1801, Jackson was appointed colonel in the Tennessee militia, which became his political as well as military base. Jackson owned hundreds of slaves who worked on the Hermitage plantation which he acquired in 1804. He killed a man in a duel in 1806, over a matter of honor regarding his wife Rachel. Jackson gained national fame through his role in the War of 1812, most famously where he won a decisive victory over the main British invasion army at the Battle of New Orleans. Jackson's army was then sent to Florida where he deposed the small Spanish garrison. This led directly to the treaty which formally transferred Florida from Spain to the United States. Nominated for president in 1824, Jackson narrowly lost to John Quincy Adams. Jackson's supporters then founded what became the Democratic Party. Nominated again in 1828, Jackson crusaded against Adams and the "corrupt bargain" between Adams and Henry Clay he said cost him the 1824 election. Building on his base in the West and new support from Virginia and New York, he won by a landslide. The Adams campaigners called him and his wife Rachel Jackson "bigamists"; she died just after the election and he called the slanderers "murderers," swearing never to forgive them. His struggles with Congress were personified in his personal rivalry with Clay, whom Jackson deeply disliked, and who led the opposition (the emerging Whig Party). As president, he faced a threat of secession from South Carolina over the "Tariff of Abominations" which Congress had enacted under Adams. In contrast to several of his immediate successors, he denied the right of a state to secede from the union, or to nullify federal law. The Nullification Crisis was defused when the tariff was amended and Jackson threatened the use of military force if South Carolina (or any other state) attempted to secede. Congress attempted to reauthorize the Second Bank of the United States several years before the expiration of its charter, which he opposed. He vetoed the renewal of its charter in 1832, and dismantled it by the time its charter expired in 1836. Jackson's presidency marked the beginning of the ascendancy of the "spoils system" in American politics. Also, he supported, signed, and enforced the Indian Removal Act, which relocated a number of native tribes to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). He faced and defeated Henry Clay in the 1832 Presidential Election, and opposed Clay generally. Jackson supported his vice president Martin Van Buren, who was elected president in 1836. He worked to bolster the Democratic Party and helped his friend James K. Polk win the 1844 presidential election.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson
- [S291] Wikipedia: Rachel Jackson, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Jackson.
Rachel Donelson Robards Jackson, born Rachel Donelson, (June 15, 1767 – December 22, 1828) was the wife of Andrew Jackson, the 7th President of the United States.[1][2] She lived with him at their home at The Hermitage, where she died just days after his election and before his inauguration in 1829—therefore she was never First Lady, a role assumed by her niece, Emily Donelson.
...
Historians found that a friend of Lewis Robards had planted a fake article in his own newspaper, saying that the couple's divorce had been finalized. The Jacksons later found out about Robards' action in planting the article, and that he had never completed the divorce. Later, Rachel ensured the divorce was completed. She and Jackson remarried in 1794. During the presidential election campaign of 1828, supporters of John Quincy Adams, Jackson's opponent, accused his wife of being a bigamist, among other things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Jackson
|
1767 - 1828 (61 years)
[1, 2, 4, 5] 
