Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Ancestors

Today I am back and telling of my famous ancestors (or the one's I know about). My famous ancestor is Rachel Donalson. She was the wife of Andrew Jackson, the President of the United States. Isn't that amazing? I think so too. Finding out that your gggggreat aunt was married to the President is something else, but then to find out that even though the were married when he was elected, she never saw the inside of the White House.

She was a woman that did not like conflict. She was not delicate, as her she traveled with her father to settle the other side of Tennessee on the Cumberland, but she never wanted the attention that Andrew's presidency would bring. Rachel and Andrew never agreed about the White House and his being President.

There was the tragedy of no posterity in Rachel and Andrew's life. The only children they ever had were adopted. They adopted the twins from her brother, and they also raised a young Native American boy. There was also a slave child that they raised as their own. To know that your only posterity is not your own had to be hard, but Andrew loved Rachel unconditionally. Her picture hung in the White House and still hangs in the Hermitage today.

Rachel's niece moved to the White House and helped with all of the domesticated areas of being in the White House that the wife would have taken care of. Rachel told Andrew she did to want him to be president but he felt he had to try. She told him that would die if we was elected president. She died in December, before he moved to Washington, D.C.

I will talk more about it tomorrow. I will also tell you if I am having any luck following a new family line.

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