The Grounds
The most attractive feature of the Hermitage grounds, aside from the mansion house itself and the garden, is the guitar-shaped driveway leading up to the front door from the entrance gate. All along both sides of the drive the General planted cedar seedlings, brought in from the near-by glades, and most of these original cedars, now grown into stately trees, still remain. The few that have succumbed to the stress of the years and the storms have been replaced with younger brothers, thus preserving the General’s original plan. The wood of the old trees uprooted by storms has been carefully preserved and is used for the manufacture of souvenirs and novelties which are sold to visitors.
Until very recently the front drive was still used as the visitors’ approach to the house; but it was feared that the continued every-day use of the drive might shorten the life of the old cedar trees, and so entrance and exit are now afforded by a modernly built driveway on the western edge of the front lawn. This drive is lined with young hardwood trees of historical significance, they having been transplanted from the historic battlefields of New Orleans and Alabama where Jackson made himself a world figure. There are thrifty young oaks here from Chalmette Plain, and from The Horseshoe, Fort Jackson, and Talladega—names indelibly associated in history with General Jackson’s ever-victorious combats with the British and with the Creek Indians. This step in the beautification of the grounds was made possible through the liberality of Mrs. B. F. Wilson of Nashville, when she was regent of the association.
Just to the rear of the dining-room wing of the house is the semi-detached brick kitchen, with its big open fireplace, where all the family’s meals were prepared during the years of the old house’s occupancy. The kitchen separate from the house served to eliminate the noise and heat and odors of cooking, so far as the family and guests were concerned. It multiplied the task of serving the meals, but of what importance was that when labor was so plentiful? In the kitchen may be seen the cooking appliances used in the early days when there were fowls and huge roasts on the spits in front of the fire, potatoes boiling in the big pot on the crane, and doubtless hoecakes on the griddle and hot biscuits in the oven. Aunt Betty was the cook during the early days and up until the time she died in 1852; and in those days the cook ruled the kitchen with an iron hand. There were swarms of little black girls to keep the fire going and turn the spits and sweep the ashes and bring water from the springhouse and carry dishes to the dining room—and Aunt Betty was their boss. Housewives of today, accustomed to the culinary conveniences afforded by electric ranges and other modern trappings, wonder how Aunt Betty, cooking on an open fireplace, could prepare the food for a big family and a house generally full of guests. But those were the days of simple fare, simply prepared; and Aunt Betty was a master of that art.
Behind the kitchen is the big brick smokehouse—empty now, but a century ago filled with the great supply of hams and bacon needed for the feeding of a large household and a hundred slaves—not to mention the numerous guests. A normal supply of meat when hogs were killed and the hams and sides salted down and smoked was from 20,000 to 25,000 pounds. Today only its dark, smoke-stained rafters remain to tell of all the succulent country hams that once hung there, but there still clings about it an elusive and entrancing aroma reminiscent of the days when it was stocked with the plantation’s supply of meat. At hog-killing time—the first freezing weather in the early winter—a big fireplace in the cellar of the big house was used to heat water to scald the hogs and also for rendering the lard in the big black iron kettles.
The carriage house, to the rear of the smokehouse, is not the original building used for this purpose. It was put there during comparatively recent years for the purpose of conveniently displaying the old Jackson family carriage. This old family carriage looks rusty and faded now, but a century ago it was the vehicular equivalent of the finest eight-cylindered limousine available today. Nothing but the best was good enough for General Jackson, whether he was buying a broadcloth suit or a horse or a carriage. Even before he was President he had an eye for style and a modest display of pomp. Old residents of Nashville used to tell of how the General would drive into town “in a carriage drawn by four handsome iron-gray horses, attended by servants in blue livery with brass buttons, glazed hats and silver bands.” These carriage horses were the apple of the old man’s eye, and whenever he referred to “my grays” it was with a note of real pride.
In the carriage house is also to be seen the framework, all that now remains of the handsome phaeton presented to General Jackson by the admiring citizens of New York. Unfortunately this vehicle was burned while Colonel Andrew Jackson, III, was living in Cincinnati, before he had sold all the family relics to the association. The wooden parts of this phaeton were made from timbers taken from the historic old ship Constitution, and it was very highly cherished by the General. It was in this phaeton that he and Martin Van Buren rode to the Capitol together for the inauguration March 4, 1837; and when he left Washington for Nashville he took the most elaborate pains to see that it was properly crated and shipped to him at home. It was carried across the river to Alexandria and thence by boat to Philadelphia. There it was shipped on a coastwise vessel to New Orleans, and thence by river boats to the Hermitage.
A good description of this historic vehicle is embraced in the account of the Van Buren inauguration written for the New York Mirror by Nathaniel P. Willis. Mr. Willis, who speaks of it as “the elegant phaeton made of the wood of the old frigate Constitution,” describes it in these words: “it has a seat for two, with a driver’s box, covered with a superb hammercloth, and set up rather high in front; the wheels and body are low, and there are bars for baggage behind; altogether, for lightness and elegance, it would be a creditable turn-out for Long Acre. The material is excessively beautiful—a fine-grained oak, polished to a very high degree, with its colours delicately brought out by a coat of varnish. The wheels are very slender and light, but strong; and, with all its finish, it looks a vehicle capable of a great deal of service. A portrait of the Constitution, under full sail, is painted on the pannels.” In this article Mr. Willis refers to another vehicle presented to the retiring President by “an eccentrick mechanick”—a sulky made entirely of rough-cut hickory with the bark on, with some curiously twisted and gnarled branches ingeniously turned into handles and whip-box. It must have been a vehicular monstrosity. At any rate, Old Hickory avoided bringing such an outlandish rig back to the Hermitage by generously presenting it to his successor, Mr. Van Buren.
Behind the present carriage house is the brick house in which the caretaker lives, this also being of modern construction. The stable standing back of the caretaker’s house was built a few years ago when the log and frame stable burned. This building had replaced the original old brick stable which was built in 1832 and which stood much nearer to the house, about where the carriage house is now located. The old driveway leading back to the stable may still be seen in the lawn to the west of the mansion house. The brick house where souvenirs are now sold is a replica of the original carriage house, being built on its old foundations.
Just to the right of the back door of the house is a deep, rock-lined well, with an old-fashioned cedar windlass and oak bucket. In the early days, however, the water supply was obtained from a never-failing spring which is reached by the long brick walk now leading from the Hermitage’s back door. This gushing spring helped fix the location of the original log Hermitage near by, as a convenient water supply was a primary essential in the pioneer days. One of Jackson’s first acts, after building the log house to live in when he moved from Hunter’s Hill, was to enclose the spring in a stone springhouse which Mrs. Jackson could use for keeping her milk and butter cold. Mrs. Jackson, who took a lively interest in the farm affairs, was especially proud of this spring which was and is an exceptionally good one.
The brick walk down to the springhouse is now shaded by a grove of trees; but originally this was the “colt lot,” the trees having been planted after the house was reclaimed. On the way down to the spring there may be seen close on the other side of the fence to the left the sole remaining relic of Hunter’s Hill—a log cabin which stood there after the old house was burned, and which was in recent years taken down and removed to this location on the Hermitage property where it might be preserved.
There are no slave quarters to be seen at the Hermitage, for in Jackson’s day the slaves who worked in the fields were scattered in their cabins about the plantation and did not all live in one long row of houses as was the prevailing custom in the South generally. There remains, however, a two-roomed log cabin just to the north of the garden which was the home of Uncle Alfred to the day of his death.
Uncle Alfred was born on the Hermitage plantation just about the time Jackson moved there from Hunter’s Hill and lived there all of his days. Living a long lifetime of almost a complete century, the span of his existence covered the years of Andrew Jackson’s whole life after his rise to distinction. He saw the building of the Hermitage, he saw it burned and rebuilt, he witnessed its decline and its rescue and its development into a magnet for visitors from all over the country. As a shiny-eyed boy of twelve he stood with the other slaves, young and old, at the big gate that never-to-be-forgotten day in 1815 when the General returned triumphant from his great victory at New Orleans; and thirty years later it was his strong arms that helped support the emaciated body of the old statesman as he sat up in his bed and gasped out his dying breath.
Born and living sixty years a slave, he was too old to change his ways when the state of Tennessee enacted the emancipation amendment to its Constitution in January, 1865. Freedom meant nothing to him then; he just went on living with the Jacksons until he could get his bearings—and then, in a few weeks, his master died and he stayed on with his old mistress because he felt that she needed him. When the state turned the property over to the Ladies’ Hermitage Association and the next generation of Jacksons moved out, he still went on living there in his same old cabin. Nobody ever seemed to consider the possibility of his moving away. Through the years he seemed to have become an integral part of the property, just as much a fixture as the stout log cabin in which he lived.
Alfred’s mother was Betty the cook; and in his youth his duties were those of a hostler and attendant at the stables. In the caste system of slavery he was undeniably of a higher stratum than the field hands; but the house servants, the real elite, always referred to him contemptuously as being from “across the yard”—their aloof designation of the stable area. At times Alfred rode the General’s horses in some of their important races, drove teams on the farm when needed for that duty, and occasionally served as driver of the family carriage. In all these duties he was noted for the way he had with horses and for his careful manner of handling them. When little Andrew, the adopted son, grew too old to be tied to the apron strings of his black mammy-nurse, Aunt Hannah, he was turned over to the tender care of Alfred—six years his senior—who served him faithfully in the complex rôle of nurse, companion, bodyguard, mentor, valet, and chum—that indescribable relationship known now only as a memory lingering in the recollections of those old men whose youthful days were spent in the loving care and companionship of slaves who were not merely servants but guardians and tutors—and friends.
When Andrew reached young manhood and was old enough to travel about the country, Alfred sometimes was called upon to go with him as his body servant; and the members of the family for years enjoyed telling of how Alfred saw to it that the young master had the best of the available accommodations whenever they went together.
On the occasion of Alfred’s first service in the unfamiliar rôle of valet, young Andrew was setting out on a steamboat trip to New Orleans. His body servant was taken sick just on the eve of their departure, so Alfred was called in from the fields to take his place—not, however, without some misgiving on the master’s part. Alfred was given some superficial coaching in his new duties and off they started. The next morning young Jackson was aroused from his slumbers by the noise of a disturbance on deck, and emerged from his stateroom to find Alfred in bellicose possession of the washbasin, soap, and towels, defying the early-rising passengers who desired to make use of the steamboat’s primitive toilet facilities. “Can’t nobody wash hisself till Massa Andrew’s used these things,” he was declaring stoutly. “Reckon I knows my business better’n dat.”
When Andrew, junior, married in 1831 and brought his bride to the White House, President Jackson presented to his new daughter-in-law a young slave woman named Gracey to act as her personal maid. When the young couple came on to the Hermitage in the spring of 1832 Gracey came with them, and the young maid from Virginia soon attracted Alfred’s favorable attention. The master and mistress looked with favor on the match, and so they were married in the fall of 1837. Mrs. Jackson made a gala affair of the wedding, having the ceremony performed in the large central hall of the Hermitage and giving the couple a handsome wedding supper.
The story of the fidelity of Alfred and Gracey to their white folk is the familiar idyl of the Old South—the faithful slaves’ devotion to their former masters in the time of the latter’s adversities. Gracey and Alfred had been with the Jacksons when they were in the White House, the first family of the land, they had enjoyed the flush days of the old General’s successes and popularity. And when the evil days came—when Alfred’s young master, now no longer young, cast off the burden of life and was laid to rest in the corner of the garden, and Gracey’s mistress faced life lonely and impoverished, with no farm left to work and no slaves left to work it—then Alfred and Gracey did not go off to set up homes of their own, in their new-found freedom, as did all of the other Hermitage black folks, but stayed there in their cabin to serve the mistress they loved as long as she lived.
Gracey died in 1887, shortly before the death of Mrs. Sarah York Jackson; but Alfred lived until 1901, and played no small part in making the Hermitage a place of interest to visitors. As long as he was physically able he served as a guide, and those who came from afar to visit the Jackson shrine deemed it a rare privilege—as indeed it was—to be shown through the house and garden by one who had been there when the spark of his old master’s vibrant personality made the Hermitage a place alive with his presence.
Alfred was fully conscious of the fact that he was a living connecting link between the departed great man and his living admirers, and he never tired of telling visitors stories illustrative of the greatness of the old General. To Uncle Alfred there was no flaw or blemish in his old master’s character or fame. His idolatrous veneration was well illustrated by his often quoted reply to a visitor who asked him if he thought General Jackson went to Heaven. “Co’se he went to Heaven,” Uncle Alfred answered with vigor, “if he want to. If he want to go dere, who gwine stop him?”
After he grew too feeble to act as a guide he kept to his cabin, and though the ills of his accumulating years bore heavily on him he always enjoyed chatting with visitors who stopped to talk with him as he sat on his doorstep in the summer or by the blazing logs in his big fireplace in the winter. Although never bedridden, his strength slowly faded away and at last he died quietly on September 4, 1901.
Not only was he given the boon of being buried in the garden, near the tomb of his deeply venerated old master, but the added honor was given him of having his funeral held in the hall of the Hermitage, his casket resting on the same spot where he and Gracey had stood to be married more than sixty years before. His funeral was attended by large numbers of his friends, both black and white, and ministers of both races participated in the burial services. Both Alfred and Gracey had originally been members of the little Hermitage church, but after Gracey’s death, Alfred transferred his membership to a near-by church of his own people.
In typically weird cadences Uncle Alfred’s black-skinned friends raised their quavering voices to sing his old favorite:
On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand and cast a wistful eye;
On Canaan’s bright and happy shore where my possessions lie.
And so he was borne through the broad front door of the Hermitage and laid to rest in his long home in the garden. “Faithful servant of Andrew Jackson” it says on his modest tombstone; and all those who read the Scripture know of the reward in Heaven promised to the good and faithful servant.