Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Cheri Sept-27-11
10:05 AM | 
Posted by
Sharp's Travels
We didn’t leave our campground until almost 10am, even though we planned an early departure. We got to talking with our neighbor and he is headed to Pigeon Forge next week so we were giving him tips on campgrounds etc.
We had one last stop before heading too far down the road and that was The Hermitage, the home of President Andrew Jackson. The Hermitage had been purchased by the Ladies Hermitage Association back in 1889 and made into a museum for people to visit. One bit of interesting information is that a slave named Alfred, who was born on the Plantation, worked as a boy assisting with the horses and maintain the wagons. When emancipated, he became a tenant farmer on The Hermitage. He lived at Hermitage longer than anyone else, white or black and worked as a handyman and was the first tour guide for the Ladies Hermitage Association when the house opened as a museum. He died in 1901. His funeral was held in the center hall of the Museum. Alfred is buried in the Hermitage garden near Jackson’s tomb.
Some 15 million people have visited here. When we checked in at the visitor’s center we were given the earphones & receiver for our audio tour. We first watched an informative movie about Andrew Jackson and then began our museum & walking tour.
Jackson was born in South Carolina in 1767. He never knew his father and lost his mother and two brothers at a very young age. He lived on his own and at 13 years old he served in the Revolution. At 20 years old he became a lawyer and moved to Tennessee. In 1794, he met & married Rachel Donelson. They had no children of their own, but did adopt one boy, Andrew Junior. In 1802 he was elected Major general of the Tennessee Militia. In 1804 Jackson purchased The Hermitage and they lived in a log cabin there until they constructed the brick Hermitage Mansion in 1819. During this time Jackson was commissioned Major General in the U.S. Army. Jackson owned over 150 slaves at any given time. He raised cotton on the plantation.
We walked the pathways and punched the numbers along our route into our audio system. We got the full history of whatever area we were walking in. This is a great way to tour someplace. It was a short walk to the mansion and we were met at the entrance by costumed guides and directed through the house by guides stationed throughout the house. It was beautiful inside, again no pictures allowed, ninety present of what we saw was original to the house. My guess is because the Ladies Hermitage Association took over the property as early at 1889.
The doorways to each room were blocked off with Plexiglas, so one could just glance into each room. There were only 4 people in our group so it was nice to be able to more around and see everything. The rooms were bright colors and some were wallpapered. There were even venison blinds on some of the windows. All the furnishing was beautiful. It would be a dream to have some of those pieces in one’s house today. We went out of the main home to get to the kitchen. Everything was cooked out there and carried into the house at mealtime.
In 1829 Jackson was inaugurated as the 7th president of the United States. He and Rachel moved to Washington and his son and wife took over the house. During this time the house burned and Andrew Junior rebuilt the house as we see it today. He gave it that Greek look with the big pillars in the front. He also had two bedroom made downstairs.
Rachel died in 1828 and Jackson had her entombed in the garden on The Hermitage. He never remarried. He went on serve another term as President. Andrew Jackson is known for starting the Democratic Party. He is also responsible for the “Trail of Tears”. He moved the Indians further west, off their land. Thousands of them died because of this. The Indians name for Jackson was DEVIL. Jackson also did not believe in freedom for the slaves. Because of these two things Jackson was not very well liked.
We visited the other out buildings on the tour and completed our visit in the garden at the grave site of Andrew & Rachel Jackson. One interesting we learned by the audio tour was that in mid 1900’s they saw cracks in the tomb slab covers so they were removed for repair. Under the cover for Rachel they found dirt on top of her casket but under Andrew Jackson’s there was no dirt to cover his. You just saw the engraving of his name on top of his. They thought maybe it was his wish he not be covered by any dirt!
After serving that last term as President he came back to The Hermitage and lived out his remaining 8 years there. He died in 1845. After his death his son inherited the property and he was not a very good manager, and within 7 years he had lost the house and surrounding land. We thought it was a very informative tour. We loved the audio.
We returned to the 5th wheel for a quick bite to eat and were on our way. We arrived at Pigeon Forge around 6pm, got set up and called it a great day.
Gay has uploaded pictures of our tour of Hermitage, click this link https://picasaweb.google.com/sharpstravels then click on album: Hermitage.
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