30 August 2015

Andy, never tell a lie

Elizabeth Jackson, Charleston, SC   
Elizabeth Hutchinson Jackson gave birth to future President Andrew Jackson while on a trip back from burying her dead husband. When Andrew was 14, she died from smallpox while caring for sick Revolutionary War soldiers aboard a British prison ship. No one knows exactly where she's buried but that it was a few miles north of Charleston. 
Jackson wrote: “I knew she died near Charleston, having visited that City with several matrons to afford relief to our prisoners with the British - not her son as you suppose, for at that time my two Elder brothers were no more; but two of her Nephews, William and Joseph Crawford Sons of James Crawford then deceased. I well recollect one of the matrons that went with her was Mrs. Boyd. It is possible Mrs. Barton can inform me where she was buried that I can find her grave. This to me would be great satisfaction, that I might collect her bones and inter them with that of my father and brothers.
Robert Behr - Post & Courier: wrote an article a few years ago describing how this marker came to be placed on the College of Charleston campus. 
This marker was moved there in 1967 by well-intended folks who wanted to rescue it from its original location about 2 1/2 miles uptown. In 1942, several service members at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island responded to a newspaper's call to honor Mrs. Jackson. These men, who mostly hailed from Columbia, commissioned the marker and placed it in a railroad right of way - a sort of no man's land just east of King Street Extension and Heriot Street.

1 comment:

William Kendall said...

Rather poignant.