The First Hermitage

From 1804 to 1821, these log buildings served as a two-story farmhouse and kitchen outbuilding that housed future United States President Andrew Jackson and his family, where Jackson lived out and became a symbol of the American Dream, the belief that anyone can rise to great success. After moving to a new brick mansion in 1821, Jackson reconfigured the old log farmhouse into a one-story slave cabin. Until the Civil War, the buildings sheltered some of Jackson’s enslaved workers, people for whom freedom remained a dream deferred. They stand as a symbolic reminder of the conflict between democracy and slavery that continues to haunt understanding of American life and culture, and of the interwoven yet very different experiences of Andrew Jackson and the many enslaved African Americans who lived and toiled there.

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