School Days in the Waxhaws

As a boy, Andrew Jackson attended log-cabin schools like this one in the Waxhaws, a backcountry region of devout, hard working Scotch-Irish immigrants where most children learned enough at local common schools to read the Bible and run their farms. Ambitious parents such as his mother, Elizabeth, paid a schoolmaster for advanced classes at Waxhaw Academy, where Andy and his classmates studied Greek and Latin in preparation for careers in law, medicine, or the church. In 1780-81, the Revolutionary War devastated the Waxhaws, and by age 14 Andrew was an orphan and a wounded former prisoner of war. He finished school in the nearby New Acquisition District and then moved to North Carolina to study law.

South Carolina · United States