His holdings in other parts of the territory which is now Tennessee were almost as limitless as the wilderness itself. Like the other leaders of the period—although on a somewhat smaller scale than his brother-in-law, Stockley Donelson, William Blount, and John Sevier—he dealt in great bodies of wild lands. One interesting thing that Jackson’s records show is that he was remarkably successful in many of his deals, particularly in the smaller ones which had to do with the exchange of lands in the neighborhood of Nashville. It is extremely interesting to observe that on March 19, 1794, Lewis Robards sold the future Hunter’s Hill tract to John Shannon for the sum of two hundred pounds; that on March 7, 1796, Andrew Jackson bought it of Shannon for seven hundred dollars; and that on July 6, 1804, Jackson sold it to Edward Ward for $10,000. A rough estimate of sixteen land deals recorded in Davidson County in Books C and D shows that between May 3, 1793, and February 18, 1797, he had bought something like twenty-seven thousand acres of land at an expenditure of about $20,000. These records show his major transactions of this period for two very obvious reasons—the land to the east was already largely taken up and the land in the major portion of what is now Middle Tennessee, as well as that in the future West Tennessee, was recorded in Davidson County. These deals are catalogued briefly as follows:
Book C
Page 134—Approximately 630 acres of John Donelson, in Jones’ Bent, for 100 pounds, August 30, 1793.
Page 140—320 acres of James Robertson and Hugh Leeper, on north side of Duck River, on Leeper’s Creek, for 100 pounds currency, May 3, 1793.
Page 242—640 acres of Edward Cox of Sullivan county, in Davidson County on east branches of Mill Creek, for 500 pounds, February 11, 1794.
Page 316—Buys as highest bidder, for eleven pounds, 640 acres on Big Harpeth joining Governor Martin’s survey, August 2, 1794. (Land recovered at July court, 1793, by Henry Bradford against Lardner Clark.)
Page 492—5,000 acres for $400, bought of Joseph B. Neville, Sheriff of Tennessee County, a tract of land on Reelfoot River, the property of the heirs of Henry Boyer, which had been advertised for forty days and sold at Clarksville to Sheriff Neville, who represented Andrew Jackson and was the highest bidder. April 18, 1796.
Page 493—250 acres for $60 sold to Andrew Jackson by Thomas Hickman. Located “on the south side of Tennessee River, some small distance from where a hurricane hath crossed said river....” Recorded April 18, 1796.
Page 495—640 acres for the “sum of six pence an acre” from Reese Porter, “in the Middle District lying on the South side of Duck River on the waters of Lytle’s Creek.” April 19, 1796.
Page 495—640 acres for $700, of John Shannon, Logan County, Kentucky, “a certain tract or parcel of land containing 640 acres ... situate and lying in the said county of Davidson on Cumberland river on the south side ... it being a premption grant to Lewis Robards by grant from the State of North Carolina, bearing date of July tenth 1788.” March 7, 1796. (This is the Hunter’s Hill tract.)