Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States of America, was born on March 15, 1767 in the Waxhaw’s area near the border of North and South Carolina. His parents lived in North Carolina but historians are not sure exactly where. Jackson was the third son of Scots - Irish parents. His father died a few weeks before he was born in a logging accident. His mother, Elizabeth Hutchison Jackson was a strong independent woman. After Jackson’s father died she was able to raise their three sons while they lived with one of her sisters.

When Andrew was nine years old the Declaration of Independence was wrote and signed. Then when he was only thirteen he joined the Continental Army as a courier. The Revolution hurt the Jackson family. All three boys saw the front lines. Andrew’s oldest brother Hugh, died in the Battle of Stono Ferry. Then two years later Andrew and Robert, his other older brother, were taken for prisoners for a few weeks in April of 1781.They both got smallpox and within a few days of getting let go Robert died. Later on that year Elizabeth Jackson went to Charleston to nurse American prisoners of war. There she contracted either ship fever or cholera and died. After the war was over, Andrew found himself an orphan and an only child at 14. The next year and a half he spent living with relatives and being apprenticed to a saddle maker.

He taught school for a short time after the war but did not enjoy it. When he was seventeen he went to Salisbury, North Carolina which is where he studied law for a few years. He was admitted in to the North Carolina Bar in September of 1787. In June of 1796 Tennessee separated from North Carolina and admitted to the Union as the 16th state. Andrew was soon elected Tennessee’s first congressman. He was also elected as a U.S. senator but resigned after only one session. He then went home and became a judge for six years on the Tennessee Supreme Court. Andrew’s military career which had all started when he was only 13 years old became even more successful when he was elected major general of the Tennessee militia. Jackson later lead troops during the First Seminole War in Florida. General Jackson came from the battlefields of the War of 1812 a national hero. It was during this time he got his nickname which is “Old Hickory.