The Hermitage, Home of Old Hickory

by Stanley F. Horn

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Andrew Jackson Donelson was not by any means General Jackson’s only ward. Another namesake and relative of his wife’s who was bequeathed to him and who was brought up at the Hermitage was Andrew Jackson Hutchings, orphan son of his old partner in the mercantile business, John Hutchings, who died in Alabama in November, 1817. The elder Hutchings was then a widower, and when he knew that death was upon him he sent for his old partner and asked him to consent to act as guardian to the little five-year-old boy he was leaving behind him. Jackson took the boy (“little Hutchings” he generally called him in his letters about him), and carefully reared him at the Hermitage, giving him every possible attention and advantage.

When Jackson went to Florida in 1821 he did not take Hutchings with him, the reason assigned, in a letter to John Coffee, being a strange one: “I am aware if I did and an accident happen his grandfather would believe I had destroyed him that his estate should go to his father’s family.” So he engaged a combination nurse and tutor to take up her residence at the Hermitage during his absence and keep the boy at his studies; and in his letters home from Florida he never neglected to inquire about the lad’s health and send him messages. “Say to him his cousin Andrew will bring him a pretty present when he returns, and I will buy him a pony.”

Hutchings, as the years passed on, developed into a rather difficult subject. Jackson had hardly arrived at the White House in March, 1829, heart-broken over his wife’s recent death and naturally worried over the tremendous burden of responsibility he was taking on his shoulders, when news reached him that the boy had been suspended from the University of Nashville. Much perturbed, he wrote to William Donelson asking him to send Hutchings to the school conducted by Mr. Otey at Franklin. “I wish him taught penmanship, arithmetic and bookkeeping, algebra and some of the other branches of mathematics, moral philosophy, belles letters and such other branches that may be profitable to him as a farmer and private gentleman. I have lost all hope of making him a classic scholar, and do not wish him to touch the languages except to review those books of Latin and Greek that he has read, but wish him to understand his grammar well.” He also wrote Hutchings directly that he wished him to enter the school at Franklin, but Hutchings was having too good a time back home at the Hermitage where there was no restraining hand save that of the overseer, and he began to parley about a choice of schools, claiming that he had an aversion to Mr. Otey’s school and would prefer to go to one conducted by Mr. Williford at Columbia. While all this was going on, Jackson’s friend Colonel Charles J. Love visited the Hermitage and wrote: “Young Hutchings is very much in the way at the Hermitage. He rode one of the brood mares away the other day and got her eyes put out. A letter from you might be of service. Mr. Steel is anxious he should leave the place.”

Hutchings finally went off to the Columbia school, but did not last long there. In July Jackson wrote General Coffee, who was helping him manage the boy’s estate: “His conduct has filled me with sincere regret. I can not think of letting him be lost, and have concluded to bring him here and place him at the college at George Town under the control of the Catholics. It is an excellent university and perhaps, under my own eye, I might be able to control him and convince him of the impropriety of his ways.” Accordingly he came on to Washington when Andrew, junior, returned from a visit to the Hermitage a little later; but in April Jackson sent him back to Mr. Williford’s school at Columbia. “Hutchings has behaved well at college,” he wrote Coffee, “but he has such a great dislike to this place and his health not good that I have consented to let him return under a promise that he will abandon his extravagance.” But after he had left Washington Jackson found that he had left a lot of bills unpaid, and he instructed Coffee to “notify everyone that no accounts will be paid only those authorized by you. This will be necessary to preserve him from bankruptcy and ruin.”

Instead of going back to Columbia to school, however, Hutchings simply went back to the Hermitage and began to idle his time away again. Before long Jackson had a letter from Overseer Steele complaining of “a quarrel and fight” he had had with Hutchings over the youth’s desire to whip a slave who had offended him; and again the harrassed guardian had to write to Coffee asking him to use his influence to get the boy to go back to school. “At the Hermitage he is to have a home, but I expect he will aid in keeping peace rather than be its disturber,” Jackson wrote.

Hutchings apparently never did go back to school at Columbia, but in September turned up in Washington again and wheedled Jackson into sending him to the University of Virginia. “He says he is now determined to become a learned man,” the hopeful Jackson wrote Coffee; and for a brief time it appeared that there might be something to this hope, for the boy’s professors reported his good conduct early in October. In November Jackson wrote him reproving him for not fulfilling his promise to write to him every week, but inviting him to come and spend the Christmas holidays with him at the White House. Hutchings accordingly came, and the President rounded off the holidays by permitting him to go to Philadelphia to visit his cousin, Miss Mary McLemore of Nashville, who was in school there and with whom he thought he had fallen in love.

By February, 1832, the boy’s determination to become a learned man had faded away. By absenting himself from his classes he laid himself liable to dismissal, and to escape this ignominy he withdrew from the school. Jackson was much chagrined and humiliated when notified of this state of affairs, but derived such consolation as he could from the fact that his ward was accused of no moral delinquency. He urged Hutchings to come to Washington; but the young man was evidently ashamed to face his guardian, and so wrote to General Coffee asking him to send him enough money to return to his farm in Alabama which had been left him by his father. Coffee sent the money, but instead of going to Alabama to take up the life of a farmer, Hutchings was back at the Hermitage again in April—and again causing trouble, this time in connection with the handling of some colts.

It was no doubt with a distinct feeling of relief that the harassed President was at last able to relinquish his guardianship in March, 1833, when Hutchings came of age. In writing to General Coffee, instructing him about turning over the young man’s patrimony to him, Jackson said: “I know I have performed my pledges to his father on his dying bed”; and in a letter to Hutchings he gave him some kindly and wholesome advice about the manner in which he should conduct himself.

Despite all the trouble he had had with him, however, Jackson seemed to have a real feeling of high regard for the orphan boy, son of his old partner and grandson of his wife’s sister Catherine; and he kept up a fatherly correspondence with him all the rest of his life. A significant sidelight on Jackson’s high principles in such matters is revealed by his response when Hutchings, checking over the accounting of his estate noticed that there was no charge made for administration and wrote Jackson notifying him of the supposed oversight. “I have no charge against your estate,” Jackson wrote him, “I never charged an orphan one cent for either time or expense, and I shall not now begin with you.”