In 1804, Andrew Jackson purchased a 420-acre farm two miles from the Cumberland and Stones Rivers, and he and his wife Rachel moved into the existing two-story log blockhouse. Over the next 17 years, he acquired more land and more slaves and named the plantation The Hermitage. In 1821, he and Rachel moved into a two-story Federal-style mansion on the property, with four rooms on each floor. While Rachel died in 1828, Andrew lived in the mansion intermittently until 1837, when he retired from the presidency and lived there until his death in 1845. A fire destroyed much of the mansion in 1834, and it was rebuilt and additions were made over the years. Family occupied the home until 1893, but it had already been turned into a museum, at least partially, a few years earlier, making it the second oldest presidential home museum in the country, after Washington's Mount Vernon. Because the family controlled it for so long, the mansion is unique because so many of the furnishings, include wallpaper, are original to the house.
I last visited over 15 years ago, so when we were in Nashville for the Southern Festival of Books, we had to return.
Visitors first enter a museum which tells the Jackson and Hermitage stories, including a nod to the lives of the enslaved people who made the stories possible.
From the museum, visitors walk to the house for the guided interior tour. Outside, visitors can see reconstructed slave cabins and outbuildings or explore the garden next to the house which also contains the family cemetery and the final resting place of Andrew and Rachel under a gazebo-like structure.
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