Holtzclaw was also shrewd enough to meet the complaints against the quality of his services with the suggestion of increased remuneration when his contract expired at the end of 1833; but General Jackson sternly wrote Andrew (his adopted son), then married and residing at the Hermitage, that he had written the ambitious overseer that he could not expect to receive more money—“that no farm in Davidson will justify it; that better to abandon farming than to keep it up for the benefit of an overseer, bringing me in debt, as it has for two years past.” Jackson, however, in line with his policy of encouraging Andrew to assume a man’s responsibility, told him that he could use his own judgment about reëngaging Holtzclaw.
The upshot of this matter was that Holtzclaw passed on and a new overseer, Williams, was engaged; but he lasted only one year. The General, writing to Andrew in November, 1834, said: “I knew, the moment I saw the cultivation of the farm, that Mr. Williams was of no account; that you would have been better off without him; that he was only a screen to the negroes; know nothing about cultivation and was beholden to the negroes for instruction what to do. I am happy you will soon be clear of him.” Further in his letter he grumbled about “the worthlessness of our overseers for the last three years” and urged that in engaging a successor to Mr. Williams there be set down in writing an understanding of what the overseer should do. “Let him fully understand what he is to do, viz, to attend not only to the farm but to the spinning and weaving, to the feeding of the hands, to weighing out the meat, and to having them clothed in due season and the clothing well made by our own seamstresses; to attend to all the stock, and particularly to see that our blooded stock is taken good care of when you are absent. These things should all be enumerated in your agreement, or he may saye hereafter that nothing but what was enumerated was he bound to take the superintendence of. Remember the old adage: ‘Deal with all men as though they were rogues’; if honest you are safe, but if not then your written agreement speaks for itself.”
The next man to take up the overseer’s duties was Edward Hobbs, recommended by Colonel Love as “a first-rate man.” Jackson, however, was not entirely reassured by his recommendation for in April, 1935, he wrote his son: “I fear from the weather we experience here that Mr. Hobbs has run a great risque by planting his cotton so early, as he writes me he has planted the church field in cotton and on the 13th would begin to plant the balance.” But it was not long before the General was writing: “The progress Mr. Hobbs has made shows him to be a man of judgment; that he has reduced the hands to good subordination and in doing this he has gained their confidence and attachment. Say to him that I am thus far delighted with his course and proceedings.”
Overseer Hobbs seemed to have a very good grasp of conditions on the plantation, as evidenced by an intelligent, straight-forward letter he wrote to Andrew, junior, in August while the latter was spending the summer vacation with the General at the Rip Raps. This letter, reflecting the manifold and variegated duties of an overseer of that time, reads:
Yours and your father’s of the 6th and 7th was duly received last Sunday and your directions concerning the purchase of some mares shall be attended to. I will of course get them on as good terms as possible, and I will not purchase at all without I can get suitable ones. I will also use my best exertions in selling your riding horses. I could of sold your grey horse long since had it not of been for his eye, as also the bay colt.
As respects the tap for the screw (of the gin), I have written you on the subject long since. I had the pattern made at home by Ned, with the assistance of Sharp 3 or 4 days to instruct him, and it is now at the furnace. Col. Armstrong and Col. Love were both here last Saturday and they informed me the casting would be ready in a few days. I have the timbers all ready, and so soon as I can get the casting I will put the press up again. I have the shingles nearly ready for the covering of the gin house. I shall put them on the side next the cotton scaffold this week, and should be detained by other jobs with the other side of the covering it will not interfere with the sunning of the cotton. We have a great many jobs to do, I fear more than we can possibly get through with, such as fixing our corn houses so they can be locked up, repairing lot fences, and one or two of the negro houses wants new shingles. Ned lost two or three weeks piddling at the pattern, which put us back at our jobs very much.
We have all our winter cloth for the negroes done but two pieces to weave. We will soon be done with that job. Our shoes I have not yet began. I have been trying my best to get the leather for three weeks and have not yet got it; however, I suppose it will be ready this week and I will then soon have them made.
I shall finish gathering of fodder this week and I think when I come to stack I shall have a fine chance. I hope you will not have to buy fodder, corn and oats next year.
Our neighbors are becoming a little alarmed about our cotton crops on account of the very cold rainy weather. All of our neighbors planted their cotton 3 foot and 3½ foot distance and it is now very thick, locked up very close. If this weather holds it is impossible it can make a crop. Most of our cotton is planted 4½ foot, and that is also locked but not so much. I do not think I have ever seen as cool weather in August as the past week. Two blankets was hardly sufficient to sleep under. However, I am glad to see it turning warm again.
I was at Mr. Pool’s a few days since and saw the colts gallop. They appear to be doing finely. Pool makes some considerable calculations on the black colt and Major Donelson’s horse Mombrino. He feels very confident of taking the four-mile day with him this fall. He has made a little brush with him and a horse of Squire Robertson’s that was trained with Anville last season and his heels is nothing to Mombrino. Robertson’s horse was faster a little ways than Anville’s.
As respects health, the people generally are sickly. Some sickness amongst us, but nothing serious I believe. Aaron the blacksmith and Tom Franklin was both taken sick yesterday; very hot fever all night. I gave them a large dose of calomel and jalap this morning and they are much better to-night.
I have nothing pleasing to write you about the house. Nothing much adoing. Two hands at work. I believe the brickwork to the wings not quite finished. The principal building is covered, and that is all I can say. Col. Armstrong and Col. Love is both doing their best with the firm I believe. I think Rieff needs an overseer.
Hobbs’s gloomy forebodings about the cotton crop were discounted by Colonel Armstrong in a letter to Jackson in which he said: “I expect that you have not had so large and so good a crop for several years”; but within a few weeks an unseasonably early frost had destroyed these sanguine expectations and in November Colonel Armstrong was writing sadly: “Some plantations will make half a crop, some a third. I am sorry to say that yours is very near a loss.”
This crop failure, coming right in the midst of the heavy expense occasioned by the burning of the Hermitage and most of its furniture, filled Jackson with misgivings, and he promptly wrote to Andrew urging him to exercise economy in the management of the farm and suggesting that one or two of the three-year-old stud colts might be bartered for work mares in order to avoid the necessity for a cash outlay for the mares.
At the end of the year Mr. Hobbs was reëngaged to serve during 1836, but it was not long before the reports received from the farm convinced the General that proper attention was not being given the livestock. His keen insight into what was going on a thousand miles away from him is strikingly shown in a letter he wrote Andrew in March:
My son: I inclose you a letter received to-day from Mr. Hobbs from which I infer he pays but little attention to the stock.
When I was at home, when I was engaged both in building, clearing and farming, I always kept my oxen in good order although I had them in their yokes daily; but this was done by always attending and seeing them regularly fed and watered. When I found the driver had neglected feeding regularly, I ordered him upon small allowance as well as chastising him for it, and thus with attention Mr. Parsons kept his 12 oxen as fat as his horses; but when I see Mr. Hobbs say in his letters that the young colts look badly notwithstanding that they have enough of corn, oats and fodder and a dry stable to go into, I want no better proof of the want of regularity in feeding. They are overfed one day and starved the next. The hand that attends to them filled their troughs one morning and perhaps does not see them again in two. It is the overseer’s business to see all the stock daily in the winter season, sometimes in the morning and again sometimes in the evening; and when he finds the stock neglected at once punish the hand charged with their keeping. We lost a great many last year, and when I hear of their bad condition this, and a plenty to give them, why there must be sheer neglect of them. For this neglect the overseer is answerable, and I wish to enquire and tell him frankly that he will be held responsible. That oxen, where there is plenty of food, at this season of the year are poor and broke down shows that carelessness in an overseer for which he ought to be dismissed. We have lost more in stock than two such crops would pay for—this is truly pulling out the bung and driving in the spigot. If I live to get home I will shew you and all overseers how easy it is to keep oxen fat and doing more business than when neglected and broken down. We must make better crops and preserve our stock better or we will be soon in a state of want and poverty.
If there was any unforgivable sin with General Jackson it was neglecting his live stock. Mr. Hobb’s doom was sealed. A Mr. Holliday was engaged for the year 1837—and that was the year when Andrew Jackson stepped down from the President’s chair and came back to the Hermitage to live the rest of his days. Early in January, looking forward to his return home, he wrote Mr. Holliday instructing him to be sure and plant a good vegetable garden; and, he added, “I want to have my stock so that I can do something with them when I reach home.” And immediately following the inauguration of President Van Buren he set out for home and on March 25th he was back at the Hermitage he loved so well.