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| Andrew Jackson |
Elizabeth Hutchison Jackson
Like many South Carolina women of
her time, Elizabeth Hutchison Jackson, mother of President Andrew Jackson,
lived a life of adventure and promise marred by war, hardships, and tragedy.
And like a quintessential backcountry woman, she met the challenges head on. Her contemporaries knew her as a woman of
great courage, high purpose, and enormous inner strength. Her actions showed
her to be strong-willed, pious, hard working, determined, resourceful,
resilient, and compassionate.
Susannah Smartt,
an acquaintance of Elizabeth’s,
described her as a "fresh-looking, fair-haired, very conversive old Irish
lady, at dreadful enmity with the Indians!"
Some said she
looked very much like Andrew who was described as six feet tall, weighing 145
pounds, with bushy blond hair, a pronounced jaw, and fiery blue eyes.
Born c. 1740 in Carrickfergus, Ireland,
Elizabeth was the daughter of Francis Cyrus Hobart Hutchison and Margret Lisle
of Royston, Yorkshire England. In c. 1761, she married Andrew Jackson, the son
of a prosperous linen weaver. Both were of lowland Scottish Presbyterian
families who had settled in Ulster
in the seventeenth century. During the first four years of their marriage, they
lived in the County Antrim hamlet of Bondybefore, a mile from the town of
Carrickfergus
on the shores of Belfast Lough.
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| Elizabeth Jackson was an accomplished flax weaver. |
Lured by the
promise of new lands in the American colonies and escape from religious
persecution and tariffs from the ruling Aglicans, they emigrated to America in
1765 with their two sons, Hugh, age two, and Robert, age six months. Details about where they arrived are
disputed. They either docked in Philadelphia, PA, or Charleston
(Charles Town), SC, but soon moved to the Waxhaws on the South Carolina/North
Carolina border in a small settlement comprised of a Presbyterian church, a
general store, and a few houses.
They acquired
two-hundred acres of land at Twelve Mile Creek, a tributary of the Catawba
River, southeast of what is today the city of Charlotte. Their neighbors were family
connections, branches of the Hutchison family, as well as former neighbors from
Ulster.
Times were
difficult as Andrew senior had little means of feeding his family, though he
did build a log cabin and produced enough crops to see them through the first
two years. And then the first in a series of tragedies struck.
In February
1767, Elizabeth,
only a few weeks away from the birth of their third child, suffered the
unexpected death of her twenty-nine year old husband.
On the day of
interment, a rare snow storm hit the area, and adding indignity to grief, the
pall bearers were said to be so drunk that it wasn’t until the funeral
procession arrived at the burial site that they discovered the casket had
fallen off somewhere en route. They had to retrace their steps through the snow
to find the body.
Bereaved, Elizabeth sought refuge nearby
with her sister, Jane Hutchison Crawford, and her prosperous husband, James. On
March 15, 1767, she gave birth to Andrew, naming him in honor of her deceased
husband.
Controversy has
thrived about Andrew’s actual birthplace with some arguing he was born at the
Crawfords in South Carolina, and some insisting he was born at the home of
relatives in North Carolina.
While
campaigning the first time (unsuccessfully) for the presidency, when asked about
his birthplace by James H. Witherspoon of Lancaster District, SC, Andrew responded,
"I was born in South Carolina, as I have been told at the plantation
whereon James Crawford lived about one mile from the Carolina road of the
Waxhaw Creek, left that state in 1784…."
In the role of
poor relation, Elizabeth
cared for her invalid sister and worked as a housekeeper for the Crawfords for
a decade. She was said to be a very cordial, industrious woman who could spin
flax beautifully, “the best and finest ever seen.” She taught her boys to read and write and, on
long winter nights, shared rousing stories of Ireland, its battle for freedom,
and of their grandfather Hugh’s exploits in battle and of the oppression by the
nobility of the laboring poor. Through these tales, she inspired in her sons a
sense of courage, pride, and independence.
It was Elizabeth’s hope that
Andrew would enter the ministry, but early on he proved to be a hot-tempered
young man. Impatient and rebellious, he enjoyed a more rough-and-tumble life,
fighting, and out-swearing everyone around him. Burdened by her household
responsibilities, Elizabeth
tried to guide her young son, but without the influence of a father, Andrew was
difficult to handle.
Elizabeth
was thirty-six years old when the founding fathers signed the Declaration of
Independence, but years would pass before the war reached South Carolina.
Elizabeth anxiously watched as her oldest
son, Hugh, joined the patriot regiment commanded by Colonel William R. Davie.
Much to her sorrow, she received news that Hugh died from heat exhaustion at
the Battle of Stono Ferry near Charleston,
SC, in June 1779.
Soon after the
British captured Charleston
in 1780, British soldiers and Tories started looting the countryside. Lt.
Colonel Banastre Tarleton’s men razed much of the Waxhaws settlement,
surprising a force of several hundred American patriots, killing more than a
hundred of them, massacring the wounded, and mutilating the bodies. About 150 of the wounded made their way to
the Waxhaw Presbyterian church where residents, including Elizabeth, tended their wounds.
When Andrew was
thirteen, much to Elizabeth’s
dismay, he and his brother, Robert, who was fifteen, left to join the American
troops. They worked on the staff of Colonel Davie, running errands and
delivering messages, until the summer of 1780 when General Charles Cornwallis,
the British southern commander, won the battle of Camden, SC,
and turned his troops toward the Waxhaws. After a small skirmish, Andrew and
Robert hid from the British dragoons in the house of a relative, Thomas
Crawford, but were discovered.
In response to
one of the officers who ordered Andrew to clean the mud from his boot, the
young boy responded, “Sir, I am a prisoner of war and claim to be treated as
such." For that, the soldier drew his sword and slashed Andrew across his
head and his hand. Robert refused also, and the soldier slammed his head with a
sword causing him to stagger across the room.
The brothers were
taken to Camden
along with twenty other prisoners and were placed in a prison camp with two
hundred fifty other men. Both contracted smallpox.
Elizabeth, hearing of their plight, arranged
for an exchange of prisoners--thirteen redcoats for seven patriots, including
her sons.
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| Charleston Harbor where British Prison ships were anchored. |
The forty-mile
trek from Camden to Waxhaw was arduous, with Elizabeth and a severely
wounded Robert riding horses and Andrew walking beside them. Despite all of Elizabeth’s efforts,
Robert died two days after returning home. It took Andrew weeks to regain his
health, and as soon as her son was able to leave his bed, Elizabeth
received word that two cousins had been imprisoned in British ship in the Charleston harbor.
As soon as she
could gather supplies, she left for Charleston.
Some accounts say she walked the one hundred seventy miles, but in later
letters, Andrew says she rode horseback.
The conditions on the ship were horrible: overcrowding, poor
nourishment, virulent diseases, and no medicines. Elizabeth,
true to her stalwart, compassionate character, worked so hard she succumbed to
cholera. She was taken to the home of a Mrs. Barton in the suburbs of Charleston where she was
taken care of until she died.
On November 2,
1781, Elizabeth was laid to rest wearing a dress of Mrs. Barton’s, and in a
casket constructed by Mr. Barton, in a simple unmarked grave about one mile
from what was then called Governor’s Gate, near the forks of Meeting and
Kingstree Roads. The exact site of her grave is unknown.
Andrew learned
about his mother’s death when he received a small parcel of her belongings sent
by relatives. The war had claimed the last member of his immediate family.
In the same
letter to James Witherspoon written on August 11, 1824, in which Andrew addressed
his birthplace, he wrote the following, "I knew she died near Charleston,
having visited that City with several matrons to afford relief to our prisoners
with the British - not her son as you suppose, for at that time my two Elder
brothers were no more; but two of her Nephews, William and Joseph Crawford Sons
of James Crawford then deceased. I well recollect one of the matrons that went
with her was Mrs. Boyd. Is it possible Mrs. Barton can inform me where she was
buried that I can find her grave? This to me would be great satisfaction, that
I might collect her bones and inter them with that of my father and
brothers."
But Elizabeth’s legacy to her
son was far greater than the meager personal effects she left behind. Before
leaving for Charleston,
she had given her fourteen year old son, Andrew, the following parting gift:
Andrew, if I should not see you again, I
wish you to remember and treasure up some things I have already said to you. In
this world you will have to make your own way. To do that you must have
friends. You can make friends by being honest and you can keep them by being
steadfast. You must keep in mind that friends worth having will, in the long
run, expect as much from you as they give to you.
To forget an obligation or be ungrateful for
a kindness is a base crime, not merely a fault or a sin, but an actual crime.
Men guilty of it sooner or later must suffer the penalty. In personal conduct
be always polite but never obsequious. None will respect you more than you
respect yourself. Avoid quarrels as long as you can without yielding to
imposition. But sustain your manhood always.
Never bring a suit in law for assault and
battery or for defamation. The law affords no remedy for such outrages that can
satisfy the feelings of a true man. Never wound the feelings of others. Never
brook wanton outrage upon your own feelings. If you ever have to vindicate your
feelings or defend your honor, do it calmly. If angry at first, wait till your
wrath cools before you proceed.
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Andrew Jackson never fulfilled his wish to find the bones of his mother and place them beside his father and brother’s graves. Through the efforts of Mrs. Fred C. Lawrence, regent of the Catawba Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, in 1949 a marker was placed to Mrs. Jackson in the OldWaxhaw PresbyterianCemetery.
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General Andrew
Jackson, on the occasion of his birthday March 15, 1815, in New Orleans, shared
his mother’s advice with his comrades, Major John H. Estow, Major William B.
Lewis, and Captain W.O. Butler and said, “Gentlemen, I wish she could have
lived to see this day. There never was a woman like her. She was gentle as a
dove and brave as a lioness. Her last words have been the law of my life.”
References:
Women Patriots of the American Revolution
Southern Women in Revolution, 1776-1800
Valley Tidings
“Set for the Defense of the Glad Tidings”
Volume VIII, October 2007, Number 10
York Observer (supplement of the Charlotte Observer)
“Nearby History”
December 10, 1989
History of American Women
Mother of an American President: Andrew Jackson
Elizabeth
Hutchison Jackson by Louise Pettus
Excerpt: 'American Lion' By Jon Meacham
