His wife, Rachel (born in 1767; died at The Hermitage, Tenn., December 22, 1828), was the daughter of Col. John Donelson, a wealthy Virginia surveyor, who owned extensive iron-works in Pittsylvania County, Va., but sold them in 1779 and settled in French Salt Springs, where the city of Nashville now stands. He kept an account of his journey thither, entitled "Journal of a Voyage, intended by God's Permission, in the Good Boat 'Adventure,' from Fort Patrick Henry, on Holston River, to the French Salt Springs, on Cumberland River, kept by John Donelson." Subsequently he removed to Kentucky, where he had several land-claims, and, after his daughter's marriage to Capt. Lewis Robards, he returned to Tennessee, where he was murdered by unknown persons in the autumn of 1785. (For an account of the peculiar circumstances of her marriage to Jackson, see page 257.) Mrs. Jackson went to New Orleans after the battle, and was presented by the ladies of that city with a set of topaz jewelry. In her portrait at The Hermitage, painted by Earle, she wears the dress in which she appeared at the ball that was given in New Orleans in honor of her husband, and of which the vignette in this volume is a copy. She went with Gen. Jackson to Florida in 1821, to Washington and Charleston in 1824, and to New Orleans in 1828. For many years she had suffered from an affection of the
