Aunt Suzy and Andy Jackson

By Historian Louise Pettus

In 1845, following the death of Andrew Jackson, there were in print numerous accounts of the life and adventures of Jackson. Because there were still people living who had known Jackson in his youth in the Waxhaw settlement of Lancaster County, anyone who could claim any connection was listened to and the stories were printed widely. Not all of the stories were accurate.

J. H. Gibbon, who headed the U. S. Branch Mint in Charlotte, set down the memories of Mrs. Susannah "Aunt Suzy" Alexander of Mecklenburg County, N. C, for a Washington newspaper, the National Intelligencer, in August 1845. Mrs. Alexander's memories stretched back 65 years to the Revolutionary War and the events which set the Carolina Piedmont afire.

Mr. Gibbon found Aunt Suzy still living in the same house in 1845 that she had lived in when Andy Jackson came as a refugee. Gibbon said that there was not a pane of glass in the log cabin, and "in all weather, when she is at home, one of the doors is open." He found the walls and shelves of her house "ornamented with dresses of her own making."

"Aunt Suzy" recalled that the refugees from the Waxhaws were Mrs. Elizabeth Hutchinson Jackson, her sister Margaret and her husband, George McKemey, 13-year-old Andy Jackson, and a black servant named Charlotte. "They told us they just come in to stay under our roof; and we just told them to stay." Aunt Suzy remembered that they came in August 1780 and stayed "nigh on to six weeks."

The visitors shouldered their share of the work. Mrs. Jackson "spun us heddle-yarn for weaving cloth, and the best and finest I ever saw. The Hutchinsons had all been weavers in Ireland. Mrs. Alexander described "Betty" Jackson as "fresh-looking, fair-haired, very conversive old Irish lady, at dreadful enmity with the Indians!"

Andy Jackson was remembered as "a tall young fellow, tall of his age, and a poor gripy-looking fellow; but with a large forehead, and big eyes. He never was pretty, but there was something very agreeable about him. . . . very cheerful, observing, and trying to improve.

Andy helped Suzy tend the farm. There was a large field planted in corn and pumpkins. Suzy also recalled that they were constantly having to mend the fences to keep the hogs out. (It was then the practice to fence in the crops and lets the stock forage for itself.) Soldiers passed through the area frequently and rarely bothered to close the gates behind them.

Andy gathered the pumpkins and cut them up to feed the milk cow. The horses the Jacksons and McKemeys had ridden on were hidden in a back pasture and Andy checked on them frequently. He made bows and arrows and shot snipes, partridges and wild turkeys for the table. Aunt Suzy also remembered that it was peach and watermelon time when they were there.

Aunt Suzy said her husband, James Alexander, was in the army at the time and that she had "my first baby in my arms." While Aunt Suzy's mother, pregnant with her last child, looked after the infant, Aunt Suzy and Andy "spread flax, watered, and gathered it. We had no cotton at all. He and I packed away the flax in the loft."

Aunt Suzy had feared the British regular army far less than the American Tories who, she said, did the greatest mischief. As for the Hessians (hired Germans), they were "exactly heathens! The British told them they must fight to the death; for, if the Americans took them prisoners, they would eat them!" She maintained the Americans (Whigs) never did abuse the Tories, unless it was to tar and feather them. "This neither broke their bones, nor scalded their heads, but kept them busy getting it off them; and I thought no harm of that at all."

When the Jacksons and McKemeys left Aunt Suzy's home they intended to go on to McKemey relatives on Rocky River but, said Aunt Suzy, the road was too cut up by the British and so they "reached a second shelter in Guilford," where they spent the winter. Other accounts say that they stayed at the home of the Rev. John Makemie (or McKemey) on Rocky River in Cabarrus County, N. C. Of her account, Aunt Suzy told Mr. Gibbon, "It may be a romance, but it is a romantic truth!"