Andrew Jackson met Rachel Donelson Robards not long after his arrival in Nashville in 1788, while staying at her mother’s boarding house. The historian James Parton described Rachel as the “best storyteller, the best dancer, the sprightliest companion, the most dashing horsewoman in the western country.” She and Andrew were twenty-one when they met and took an interest in each other. The two wed in the early 1790s, and in the more than three decades of marriage that followed, Andrew Jackson remained devoted to Rachel, writing to her often when he was away on active service. They are said to have shared a love for tobacco and whiskey, as well as dancing.

The topic of his marriage was an unusually sensitive subject for Jackson. When he met Rachel, she was separated from her abusive, alcoholic husband, Lewis Robards. Evidence suggests that Andrew and Rachel lived together as man and wife before the divorce from Robards had been legally granted. A marriage ceremony was said to have been performed in Natchez in 1791, and Jackson insisted their marriage was legal according to the “understanding of everyone in the country.” Even so, he and Rachel were married a second time, in January of 1794.

Not surprisingly, the circumstances of Jackson’s marriage to Rachel were dragged into public view when he became a candidate for national office. Pro-Adams pamphlets referred to Rachel as an adulteress. Jackson never forgot or forgave these aspersions. The intense public scrutiny of her private life perhaps led Rachel to dread the prospect of life in Washington after her husband won his second bid for the presidency, in 1828. She died suddenly in late December 1828 at the Hermitage, the Jacksons’ home near Nashville, at the age of 61, a few weeks before Jackson’s inauguration.