The glimpses which one gets of the General’s surroundings and habits during his brief interval of repose create a pleasing impression.  Following the winding turnpike westward from Nashville a distance of nine or ten miles and rumbling across the old wooden bridge over Stone River, a visitor would find himself at Hermitage Farm.  The estate contained at that time somewhat more than a thousand acres, of which four hundred were under cultivation and the remainder luxuriant forest.  Negro cabins stood here and there, and in one corner was a little brick church which the proprietor had built for the solace of his wife.  In the center of a well-kept lawn, flanked with cedars and oaks, stood the family mansion, the Hermitage, whose construction had been begun at the close of the Seminole War in 1819.  The building was of brick, two stories high, with a double wooden piazza in both front and rear.  The rooms were small and simply furnished, the chief adornment being portraits of the General and his friends, though later was added the familiar painting of Mrs. Jackson.  Lavasseur, who as private secretary of La Fayette visited the place in 1825, was greatly surprised to find a person of Jackson’s renown living in a structure which in France would hardly suffice for the porter’s lodge at the chateau of a man of similar standing.  But western Tennessee afforded nothing finer, and Jackson considered himself palatially housed.

Life on the Hermitage estate had its full share of the charm of the old South.  After breakfasting at eight or nine, the proprietor spent the day riding over his broad acres, giving instructions to his workmen, keeping up his accounts, chatting with neighbors and passers-by, and devouring the newspapers with a zeal born of unremitting interest in public affairs.  After the evening meal the family gathered on the cool piazza in summer, or around the blazing hearth of the great living room in winter, and spent the hours until the early bedtime in telling stories, discussing local and national happenings, or listening to the news of distant localities as retailed by the casual visitor.  The hospitality of the Jackson home was proverbial.  The General’s army friends came often to see him.  Political leaders and advisers flocked to the place.  Clergymen of all denominations were received with special warmth by Mrs. Jackson.  Eastern men of distinction, when traveling to the West, came to pay their respects.  No foreigner who penetrated as far as the Mississippi Valley would think of returning to his native land without calling upon the picturesque figure at the Hermitage.

Chief among visitors from abroad was La Fayette.  The two men met in Washington in 1824 and formed an instant attachment for each other.  The great French patriot was greeted at Nashville the following year with a public reception and banquet at which Jackson, as the first citizen of the State, did the honors.  Afterwards he spent some days in the Jackson home, and one can imagine the avidity with which the two men discussed the American and French revolutions, Napoleon, and the late New Orleans campaign.