and other exalted positions as a fine representative American woman.
RACHEL JACKSON.
When, in the year 1789, Andrew Jackson, a tall, red-haired, strong-featured young man, made his appearance in the new settlement of Nashville, Tennessee, he went to live in a boarding house that was kept by a Mrs. Donelson. Mrs. Donelson was a widow. Her husband, who had been a pioneer in the settlement of Nashville, had been killed, by Indians, it was supposed. With Mrs. Donelson lived her daughter, Mrs. Robards, and the society of this lady Jackson found to be the pleasantest feature in his boarding house life.
Mrs. Robards was an interesting woman. She was of the regular pioneer type, such as was often to be met with in the frontier days of our country during the earliest days of the Republic. Courageous, daring, full of life and spirit, she was universally liked as a merry story-teller, a rollicking dancer, a daring horsewoman and, altogether, a most jolly and entertaining companion. She had been a belle among the hearty young woodmen and planters who had gone out with Colonel Donelson to take charge of the frontier region beyond the big salt lake. But it was not to one of those first Nashville settlers that she gave her heart and hand. She married a Kentuckian, Mr. Lewis Robards. The story of this marriage is not a happy one. It is that of a cruel husband and an early divorce, after which she came back to take up her life again in the valley of the Cumberland.
It is not surprising that Andrew Jackson and Rachel Donelson, living in the same house, as they did, subjected to the common peril of hostile Indians and violence and bloodshed, for which this region was noted, congenial in tastes and characteristics, should have grown to love each other. In the year
