In the year 1788 Andrew Jackson, a young lawyer from North Carolina, arrived at Nashville to enter upon the practice of his profession, and went to board with Mrs. Donelson.  He soon discovered that Mrs. Rachel Robards lived most unhappily with her husband, who was a man of violent temper and most jealous disposition.  Young Jackson had not long resided in the family before Mr. Robards began to be jealous of him, and many violent scenes took place between them.  The jealous Robards at length abandoned his wife and went off to his old home in Kentucky, leaving Jackson master of the field.

A rumor soon after reached the place that Robards Had procured a divorce from his wife in the Legislature of Virginia; soon after which Andrew Jackson and Rachel Donelson were married.  The rumor proved to be false, and they lived together for two years before a divorce was really granted, at the end of which time they were married again.  This marriage, though so inauspiciously begun, was an eminently happy one, although, out of doors, it caused the irrascible Jackson a great deal of trouble.  The peculiar circumstances attending the marriage caused many calumnies to be uttered and printed respecting Mrs. Jackson, and some of the bitterest quarrels which the general ever had had their origin in them.

At home, however, he was one of the happiest of men.  His wife was an excellent manager of a household and a kind mistress of slaves.  She had a remarkable memory, and delighted to relate anecdotes and tales of the early settlement of the country.  Daniel Boone had been one of her father’s friends, and she used to recount his adventures and escapes.  Her abode was a seat of hospitality, and she well knew how to make her guests feel at home.  It used to be said in Tennessee that she could not write; but, “as I have had the pleasure of reading nine letters in her own handwriting,” says Parton, “one of which was eight pages long, I presume I have a right to deny the imputation.  It must be confessed, however, that the spelling was exceedingly bad, and that the writing was so much worse as to be nearly illegible.  If she was ignorant of books, she was most learned in the lore of the forest, the dairy, the kitchen, and the farm.  I remember walking about a remarkably fine spring that gushed from the earth near where her dairy stood, and hearing one of her colored servants say that there was nothing upon the estate which she valued so much as that spring.”  She grew to be a stout woman, Which made her appear shorter than she really was.  Her husband, on the contrary, was remarkably tall and slender; so that when they danced a reel together, which they often did, with all the vigor of the olden time, the spectacle was extremely curious.

It was a great grief to both husband and wife that they had no children, and it was to supply this want in the household that they adopted one of Mrs. Donelson’s nephews, and named him Andrew Jackson.  This boy was the delight of them both as long as they lived.