Rachel's Death | Andrew Mourns| Retaliation
Nashville Mourns | Obituaries | Her Memory Honored

The mayor and the board of alderman voted a resolution urging the people of Nashville to abstain from their ordinary business on December 24 and that church bells be tolled from one to two o'clock during the hour of her funeral.

On the day of her funeral, December 24, 1828, some 10,000 people turned up, according to newspaper accounts, "The road to the Hermitage was almost impassable … Thousands from the city and from all the country around flocked to her funeral. The poor white people, the slaves of the Hermitage and adjoining plantations, and the neighbors crowded off the gentry of town and country, and filled the large garden in which interment took place. One of the slaves was so distraught that she had to be held back from throwing herself into the grave." [1]

At one o'clock, as the church bells began to ring, the casket was carried from the Hermitage to the garden. Sam Houston led the pallbearers. Then Andrew followed. The Donelson family came behind Jackson and the servants followed. They demonstrated uncommon devotion and affection for Rachel Jackson. "I never before saw so much affliction among servants on the death for their mistress," one reporter observed. Old Hannah collapsed at the gravesite and had to be carried off the ground. "My mistress, my best friend, my love, my life, is gone," she cried, "I will go with her." [2]

Footnotes:

1. Katherine W. Cruze, An Amiable Woman: Rachel Jackson (Nashville: The Hermitage and the Ladies Hermitage Association, 1994) p. 26.

2. Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson, Volume Two, The Course of American Freedom, 1822-1832 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998) p. 153.

Sources:

Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson, Volume Two, The Course of American Freedom, 1822-1832 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998) Chapter 8, "Triumph and Tragedy"

James Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson, Volume III (New York: Mason Brothers, 1861)

Katherine W. Cruze, An Amiable Woman: Rachel Jackson (Nashville: The Hermitage and the Ladies Hermitage Association, 1994)