The funeral service was, in fact, delayed because she had thrown herself upon her mistress’ grave and refused to move. General Jackson would not allow her to be torn away by force, but waited patiently until her associates could persuade her to allow them to remove her.
So ended all thoughts of victory for Andrew Jackson. All that had made victory sweet, all that had made life worth while, had passed away. The only thing to which the broken old man looked forward was his return to their beloved Hermitage. His body, his mind, and his indomitable will he carried to Washington—but his heart he left buried with Rachel in their garden.
Although for a time after her death Rachel Jackson’s Hermitage—the building as it appeared from 1819 to 1831—remained unchanged, the period was, to all intents and purposes, ended. The household and its followers centered about the White House, and the lonely resting place of its mistress was left to the tender care of relatives and the slaves whose grief was still inconsolable. General Coffee, R. E. W. Earl, Andrew Jackson Donelson and his wife, Emily, who was for a time mistress of the White House; Andrew Jackson, Jr., and later his bride, Sarah York Jackson; Major Lewis, and others formed a part of the household. Some of the time three Marys—Mary Coffee, Mary McLemore, and Mary Eastin—daughters of Rachel’s nieces, added gayety to the Washington household. Mary Eastin was married in the White House to Lucius Polk, and Mary Coffee married General Jackson’s ward, Andrew Jackson Hutchings.
A new phase in the history of the Hermitage began in 1831. Andrew Jackson, Jr., married the beautiful and cultured Miss Sarah York, of Philadelphia, on November 24, 1831. Some interest in the future began to live in the heart of Andrew Jackson. Since his wife’s death he had contemplated his son’s marriage with more than ordinary concern.
“It is,” he wrote to a friend in May, 1829, “the only hope by which I look to a continuation of my name....”
It proved to be more than that for it was the beginning of a beautiful relationship destined to last from the time he welcomed Sarah York Jackson, as a bride, to the White House, until she stood at his deathbed at the Hermitage in 1845. The President, because of pressing duties and ill health, had not been able to make the journey to Philadelphia to attend the wedding, but he sent Col. Earl with a cluster of pearls for the bride. It was in the form of a ring, and there was a lock of his hair on the under side of the setting. With it he sent the message that from his son’s description of her he thought “pearls the most fitting gift, as emblematic of the purity of her character and the beauty of her face.” (From the notebook of Mrs. Rachel Jackson Lawrence—State Library.)