OLD HICKORY
BORN AT WAXHAW SETTLEMENT, MARCH 15, 1767
DIED AT THE HERMITAGE, JUNE 8, 1845
By Robert L. Taylor
The most noted character in American history, one whom the coming ages will number among the truly great, was born at a point so obscure that its exact location is still in dispute. On the remote frontier of the Carolina colony, whose boundary lines were uncertain; far up on the forest-clad banks of the Catawba, whose slopes were just beginning to feel the pioneer’s axe; on the fifteenth day of March, 1767, Andrew Jackson was presented to humanity.
The story of his mother partakes of the tragic, the heroic and the pathetic. The daughter of a fairly prosperous linen weaver of Carrickfergus, she linked her destiny with young Andrew Jackson, a Scotch-Irishman, and, after a few years at home, they left the shores of the Emerald Isle, seeking fortune in the new colonies. Scarcely had they fixed their abode in the Waxhaw Settlement and begun to make a home, when death claimed the young husband, and the bereaved widow was left almost destitute, with two young sons, Hugh and Robert, her sole dependence. Within a few days Andrew was born, and necessity forced her to send her eldest son, Hugh, to live with a relative, while she and the two younger made their home with another.
Here in the primeval forests young Andrew began to imbibe that love of liberty which fitted him later so to bless humanity. His education was obtained in the old field school, but, impatient of its restraints and loving best the rifle and the chase, he spent the earlier years in developing the sinews of a vigorous manhood.
When yet a mere lad the sweep of the Revolution reached the Waxhaw Settlement, and Mrs. Jackson willingly gave her two older boys to the service of the colonies, but clung to her youngest born until the insult of a British officer gave intensity to an inclination that was destined to cost England so dear.
