At age 17, while living with her family on the frontier, near what is now Harrodsburg Kentucky, Rachel Donelson married a young man named Lewis Robards.

It was to be a brief and stormy marriage. Robards, insanely jealous by some accounts, believed Rachel was overly flirtatious with men. For her part, Rachel refused to be the submissive and obedient wife Robards desired.

In 1788, at age 22, Rachel left Robards and moved to Nashville to live with her widowed mother. There she met Andrew Jackson.

Poor, uneducated, and orphaned at a young age, Jackson had grown up in the Carolina upcountry. In the 1780’s some lawyers in North Carolina recognized that the young man had talent and potential and had encouraged him to study law.

In 1787 he was admitted to the bar and soon afterwards accepted an appointment as prosecutor in the frontier town of Nashville.

Jackson was 22 years old when Rachel showed up at her mother’s farm, where he was living as a boarder.

The details have been lost to time, but Rachel and Jackson were attracted to one another and soon became friendly.

When Robards showed up in Nashville to retrieve his wife, he and Jackson clashed. After telling Rachel he was done with her, Robards departed for Kentucky and Rachel traveled with a group of settlers to Natchez, Mississippi. Jackson followed her.

Jackson always maintained afterwards that he believed that Robards had obtained a divorce, and that he and Rachel were thereafter married in Natchez. That is likely true, but no record has ever been found of the marriage. And when Andrew and Rachel returned to Nashville as Mr. and Mrs. Jackson, Rachel was still legally married to Robards. There had been no divorce.

When word of what had happened made its way to Robards, he accused Rachel of bigamy and promptly divorced her. She and Jackson then married, perhaps for a second time, in 1794.

During Andrew Jackson’s ascent to financial, military, and political prominence, he and Rachel maintained a devoted and loving (albeit childless) marriage.

Rachel became a person of devout faith and Jackson adored her. And when Rachel’s character became a favorite topic for Jackson’s political opponents, he was furious, and she was deeply distressed.

During Jackson’s presidential campaign, supporters of his opponent John Quincy Adams dredged up the story of the Jacksons’ premature marriage, painting them as adulterers and bigamists.

Jackson won the election, but Rachel was pained at the thought of having to move to Washington DC and subject herself to whispers and ridicule of Washington society.

“I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than live in that palace in Washington,” she said.

She would never live there. A few months before her husband’s inauguration, Rachel died, at age 61. The exact cause of her death remains unknown, but for the rest of his life Andrew Jackson blamed it on the stress and heartache to which his political enemies had subjected her.

Andrew Jackson outlived his wife Rachel by 17 years, but his devotion to her never diminished.

He carried a locket with her likeness in it and positioned her portrait in his bedroom so that her face would be the first thing he saw when he woke up in the morning and the last thing he saw before going to sleep at night.

She was buried at their home in Nashville and in his retirement Jackson would spend part of every day sitting on a bench next to her grave. On her tombstone he had inscribed, “A being so gentle and so virtuous, slander might wound but could not dishonor.”

Rachel Donelson Jackson died on December 22, 1828.

The portrait is from 1823.

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