The Hermitage, Home of Old Hickory

by Stanley F. Horn

In 1889 the association must have viewed the task ahead of it with something akin to terror: A tumble-down house, a neglected and weed-grown lawn and garden, dilapidated fences and out-houses—and an empty treasury. Window-panes were broken out; the woodwork had not known the touch of a paint-brush for forty-five years; the stately columns were rotting and awry; window shutters were off their hinges, flapping in the wind; the roof leaked so badly that the plastering was falling off the walls and ceiling; the wallpaper was hanging in tatters; the old dining-room was used as a place for storing sacks of wheat, with space left for General Jackson’s old carriage; the rear lawn had been plowed up and cultivated. Here was a rehabilitation job of sickeningly great proportions—and the fledgling organization did not even have enough cash in hand to start grubbing up the young elm and mulberry sprouts that covered the front lawn.

But the ladies, buoyed up by their zeal and devotion, never lost heart. They would not permit themselves to be discouraged at the magnitude of the task confronting them. By dint of holding entertainments and concerts and balls and resorting to other money-making expedients they slowly accumulated enough to begin the work of making the most immediately necessary repairs. It was an Herculean task, and the marvel is that they had the courage and pertinacity to attempt it and stick to it in those early days when financial help was so hard to get.

One of the earliest sources of revenue for the association was the staging of excursions to the Hermitage. This was before the days of good roads and automobiles and the place, located twelve miles from the center of Nashville, was distinctly inaccessible. There was a railroad station two miles from the house, and the plantation’s steamboat landing was located just back of the soldier’s home building three miles away.

The first excursion was made by way of both rail and steamboats from Nashville, and was given on the occasion of the annual meeting of the National Educational Association in that city in July, 1889. This was the very first activity of the new organization, and it was on this occasion that the Hermitage was first thrown open as a public institution. “Pleasure wagons” met the trains and steamboats and transported the visitors to the house; and during the four days’ session of the educational association more than a thousand people drove up the driveway, bordered with its towering cedars, and visited Old Hickory’s old home.

A noteworthy feature of this first official visitation of the Hermitage by the public was that just before the first wagon-load of pedagogical excursionists drove up to the front door of the mansion house there was born there the last of the Jackson name ever to be given birth within the walls of the Hermitage. The new arrival was named Albert Marble Jackson, in honor of the president of the educational association; and a committee of the visiting educators with a flourish presented the little fellow with a primer, placing his baby hands upon it when he was but a few hours old. All of the visiting ladies, of course, had to pick up the new baby and cuddle it; and his old nurse never tired of recounting the fact that after the visitors had gone poor little Marble was “as red as a beet” from all the manhandling he had received during the day. Not until he had been given a sedative (in the form of a mild toddy) was he finally sung to sleep that night, after as strenuous a day as any new-born baby ever experienced. It was this baby, grown to be a handsome young man, who had the honor of unveiling Andrew Jackson’s bust in Statuary Hall in the Capitol at Washington in 1928.

Another promotional activity of the Ladies’ Hermitage Association, launched in 1890 and continued until recent years, was the brilliant ball given each year in celebration of Jackson Day—January 8th, the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans. An interesting feature of this ball each year has been the lighting, for only a few seconds, of the historic candle found in Lord Cornwallis’s tent at the time of his surrender. The candle was presented to General Jackson during the height of his fame and was one of his most prized possessions. He made it a practice during his lifetime to light it briefly on every Eighth of January, and it was in honor of this ceremony of his that the practice was perpetuated in the Jackson Day balls. This old candle, brown with age, is one of the many interesting things to be seen now in the museum at the Hermitage.

When the Hermitage property was turned over to the association in 1889 it was in such a state of decay that it was hard to determine just where to start the work of repair. The roof was leaking, the woodwork needed painting, the wallpaper was hanging in shreds on the dampened and moldy walls. One of the first works of restoration involved the repair of the hand-painted scenic wall paper that adorned the lower hall. This paper was threatened with complete destruction when the ladies’ association took over the management of the property; and an expert wallpaper man spent two weeks repairing it and putting it back in place. At the same time the wall paper all over the house was restored and renovated, as it was considered a matter of primary desirability and importance to preserve the original paper which had been selected by General Jackson and sent to the Hermitage when it was rebuilt in 1835. An excellent job of restoration and repair was accomplished, this being particularly noticeable in one of the guest rooms on the second floor. The paper in this room, in the old-fashioned block design, showed recurring bunches of roses; but the dampness of the walls had caused large patches of it to fall away and be lost. An artist was employed who so skilfully reproduced the design in fresco on the wall that it is today hard to see where the paper ends and the painting begins.

Earl’s portrait of General Jackson mounted on Sam Patch.