Abandonment and Preservation

After Andrew Jackson’s death, the Jacksons’ finances worsened, and the log farmhouse-slave cabin slowly fell into ruin. In 1889, Tennessee entrusted the property to the Ladies’ Hermitage Association, which immediately restored the one-story remains of the farmhouse as a monument to Andrew Jackson. Because the building’s history as a slave cabin went untold, visitors to The Hermitage for many years mistakenly believed that Jackson had lived in a crude one-story frontier log cabin. Since the early 1970s, historical and archaeological research has uncovered much new information about the enslaved African Americans who lived there and about the house’s appearance during Jackson’s residency. That research guided the restoration of the buildings to the period after 1821, when enslaved people occupied both buildings, and the site now presents both Andrew Jackson’s life there and the lives of his enslaved workers.

Nashville-Davidson metropolitan government (balance), Tennessee · United States