Why Is His SLAVE Buried Next To President ANDREW JACKSON At The Hermitage?

hey everybody Steve here and Andrew Jackson's final resting place The Hermitage I was here three days ago trying to get in through the gates and discovered they were closed for two days where I went in line to find out when they would be open and discovered that you have to pay a fee just to be on the grounds it's 18 it was twenty dollars and fifty cents with tax so and it's set online that you could only purchase the tickets online not here on site but now driving in and I see there is a ticket office here so maybe that was incorrect information I don't know I'll I'll soon find out but it's taken me now three days to attempt to visit Andrew Jackson's final resting place and through the gates here in the parking lot they should open in about 15 minutes and I'll soon find out if I actually get to visit his grave site or not and to me this all seems very strange it never even occurred to me that a U.S president would have a private grave site that the public was not allowed to visit anytime they wanted now I can enter understand if you can't get up close and personal to the great side in fact I would expect that most of them you wouldn't be able to get very close but my grave sites gravesite it's usually in a public place but now I also discovered this is not a public site this is a privately owned estate I assume it's still owned by the family or The Heirs to Andrew Jackson This Is The Hermitage this was his home and I assume they kept it in the family and now it looks like it's a huge huge property like a big ranch or something a farm now it's a tourist attraction but I have to say it's a tourist attraction it's not easy to get into and as you can see I did finally get in and even though the website said you had to buy your tickets in advance online they were selling tickets here at the ticket booth and it seemed as if most people were just buying them here either way you definitely want to plan your trip in advance because they are closed a couple of days a week and if you're like me and you happen to arrive on the wrong day when they happen to be closed you're just out of luck and have to wait a couple of days for them to open up before or you can visit the Hermitage or the grave sites in order to get to the grounds to see the home and in the grave sites you first have to walk through this Museum and you can spend as little or as much time as you want here it's very well designed The Hermitage Plantation is 1120 Acres so this map that they give you with your ticket is very helpful at the ticket booth they said it's about a 10 minute walk to the plantation so that's great I'll give my walk in this morning I love to walk and I've been mostly driving on this trip not as much walking as I'd like to do it's very pretty here [Music] foreign looks like it there but I've only been walking for about a minute or two so maybe other people walk slower now his tomb is supposed to be I believe straight ahead it seemed like it was to the I think it's the East maybe it's the Northeast wow look at how pretty that is and I did get a glimpse of the Tomb right over there I'm pretty sure that's it but before I walk over to the Family Cemetery and gravesites I want to get a closer look at the house first this Southern mansion looks like it's straight out of a movie doesn't it I wonder if it's been used as a location in any movies and it's almost impossible to think about southern plantations without thinking about slavery back in the 1800s most if not all of the labor needed to run large plantations like this was provided by slaves it's a shameful part of our American history but 12 American presidents did own slaves during their lifetimes and eight of those presidents own slaves while they were in office including Andrew Jackson who owned between 150 and 200 slaves during his lifetime and this historical informational kiosk is all about one of his slaves Alfred Jackson was a slave who was born here at the Hermitage in 1803 and died September 4th 1901 at the age of 98. he spent his entire life life here on this property and lived here longer than any other single person including the president when he was born his mother Benny was the enslaved cook for the Jackson family and his father Ned was the Carpenter on the property when Alfred was old enough he became in charge of maintaining the vehicles and horses while the president and the first lady lived in the Mansion Alfred and the other slaves lived in various slave quarters located here behind the house Alfred Mary Gracie Bradley who was Sarah Jackson's personal maid and they had two children Augustus and Sarah here in the U.S slavery was abolished in 1865 following the Civil War but Alfred remained here on the plantation and continued to work for the Jackson family and also rented 24 Acres from them and raised his own food and cotton and butter for sale by the 1880s he had moved into this log dwelling which is now known as Alfred's cabin then in 1889 when the ladies Hermitage Association Association took over running and operating the plantation he became the caretaker of the property and also became a guide for tourists who came to visit with a lifetime of personal history to share he became a valued and honored member of The Hermitage which is how he came to be buried just feet away from the former president and first lady the combined number of slaves owned by the 12 presidents totaled more than two thousand but as far as I've been able to tell after visiting the gravesites of all the U.S presidents Alfred Jackson is the only slave who was once owned by a President Who has a graveside with a headstone with his name on it presidents George Washington Thomas Jefferson and James Madison all owned slaves and they're all buried in their family cemeteries on their former properties and they each have slave graveyards on their properties but I didn't see any slave grave sites with headstones including the names of their slaves when I visited Thomas Jefferson's Monticello home his grave site was open to the public but the slave grave site on the property was closed for construction and Renovations of course not all of the slaves owned by the presidents died while they were enslaved many were eventually freed and died years later but surprisingly I wasn't able to find any information online about where any of them are buried including on Wikipedia or find a grave so as far as I've been able to discover Alfred Jackson is the only slave who was once owned by a U.S president who has a grave site and a headstone with his name on it if you do happen to know of others please share their names in the locations where they're buried in the comments section below so we can help keep their memories alive too Dred Scott Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass were all former slaves who became famous and who all have grave sites with headstones but as far as I can tell none of them were ever owned by a U.S president this historical informational kiosk is here at the foot of President Andrew Jackson's grave site and talks about the president president the first lady and Alfred Jackson let me read some of this to you it says a being so gentle and yet so virtuous Rachel in Andrew's tomb now right up here talking about the funeral it says Andrew Jackson was a national hero and the nation mourned his death in 1845. ceremonies and funeral parades in cities and towns Across the Nation like the one pictured here in New York honored Jackson's memory Warner's often wore silk ribbons like this one and then kept them as mementos note that the engravers chose to call him General Jackson not president Jackson I don't see the ribbons do you now this right here is the inscription on Rachel's Tomb it says this moving inscription Jackson placed on Rachel's Tomb highlights his sensitivity towards questions about her honor it is shown here as it appears on the tomb here lie the remains of Mrs Rachel Jackson wife of President Jackson who died the 22nd December 1828 861 her face was fair her person pleasing or temporary amiable and her heart kind she delighted in relieving the wants of her fellow creatures and cultivated the Divine pleasure by the most liberal and unpretending methods to the poor as she was a benefactor to the rich an example to The Wretched a comforter to the prosperous and ornament her piety went hand in hand with her benevolence and she thanked her creator for being permitted to do good they're being so gentle and yet so virtuous slander my wound but could not dishonor even death when he tore from the arms of her husband could but transferred her to the bosom I forgot the exact cause of Rachel's death is not known but evidence points to heart failure after Rachel died Jackson hired Louisa Catherine's Strobel or Strobel to paint this miniature offer Jackson carried it with them all the time this is a quote I find myself a solitary mourner deprived of all hope of Happiness the sight of the grave and often wish myself at the Hermitage there to spit the remnant of my days in Daily drop a tear on the tomb of my beloved wife Andrew Jackson to Hardy Murphy crier May 16 1829 at the end of his presidency Jackson returned to the Hermitage where numerous accounts confirmed that he visited Rachel's Tomb daily when he died on June 8 1845 he was laid to rest next to Rachel his Tombstone simply reads General Andrew Jackson says Alfred's grave to the right of the Jacksons tomb note the grave of Alfred Jackson a former Hermitage enslaved worker Alfred requested that the ladies are Hermitage Association barium next to Jackson's tomb the marker reads Uncle Alfred because in the late 19th early 20th century is the term's uncle and auntie were considered a polite way of addressing elderly black people no longer used today these terms are now seen as derogatory you know Uncle Tom and Ed shemaima answer mine was just recently removed as a logo from the syrup because of its political incorrect it's funny how things change over time isn't it so his grave must be this one here [Applause] [Music] and I guess it's part of the audio tour which I'm not taking today I'm just doing this on my own Uncle Alfred died September 4th 190. is that 1901 I can't really tell age 98 years old wow he lived a very long life faithful servant of Andrew Jackson now I wonder where the other slaves are buried I wonder if they have their own graveyard while walking around the grounds here I didn't notice any signs pointing to any slave cemeteries like I did at the other presidential gravesites and I didn't notice anything mentioned on the map either and there was just so much to see here that I got distracted and didn't think to ask anyone as you can see there were lots of other Graves here in this family Cemetery but these are just grave sites of family and friends I was really curious to know where Alfred's wife and his mother and his father were buried and I discovered that he does have a find a great memorial page but none of his relatives are included on that page while editing this video and looking at the hundreds of photos and videos I shot during my visit to the Hermitage I just happened to notice that on the bottom right hand corner of this map of the grounds there's a little tiny picture of a church and if you have a magnifying glass you can see the just to the left of the church it says cemetery and this is the slave Cemetery it appears to be located on the other side of a highway and I just missed seeing it when I looked at this map I went back and looked at the original map that they gave me and again if you have a magnifying glass with you a tiny Arrow does point off the map and mentions the enslaved Memorial now I really wish that I had taken the audio tour since it does seem to be a part of that tour using the map they gave me though I didn't even know there was a church on the property and it's too far away from the home to even see in 2006 archaeologists were Excavating at a plantation near The Hermitage when they discovered the remains of 60 bodies this was apparently a slave grave site the remains of the 60 bodies were reinterred at The Hermitage next to the Hermitage church and in 2009 an enslaved Memorial was created at the site the memorial was erected as a place to reflect on the continued Legacy of slavery none of the the Articles mentioned if any of these bodies belong to Slaves who worked at the Hermitage and I'm still left wondering where Alfred Jackson's family members were buried if any of you happen to know please share with us in the comments section this week I want to give a shout out and a very big thank you to my latest Channel supporters Phoebe McGee Zing Wilder and Sandy thank you all so much for your very kind and generous donations to my channel using YouTube super thanks your donations are very appreciated until our next road trip to the cemetery together thanks for sharing the memories everybody

Channel: The Graveyard Channel

Views: 370,202

Keywords: us presidents, us president, president gravesites, us president gravesites, andrew jackson gravesite, the hermitage family cemetery, the hermitage tennessee, historic cemetery, famous graves, grave tours, cemeteries, cemetery tours, graveyards, presidential history, history channel, travel channel, the hermitage history history, slave graves, slave cemetery, black history, slave history, historic homes, cemetery tour, cotton plantation, historic home tour, alfred jackson

Id: Edr5DMqeoDs

Length: 13min 8sec (788 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 20 2023