Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States, serving from 1829 to 1837. Born in 1767 in the frontier settlement of the Waxhaws in South Carolina, Jackson moved to Salisbury, NC in 1784 and received his license to practice law in 1787, beginning his practice in North Carolina's Western District in Washington County (now a part of Tennessee). In October 1788, he moved to Nashville where he met his wife Rachel. After serving as the major general of the Tennessee militia for twenty years and earning recognition as a military leader in the War of 1812, Jackson was elected to the U. S. Senate in 1823 and to the presidency in 1828. After serving two terms as president, Jackson returned to the Hermitage, his Nashville home, in early 1837. Eight years later, in 1845, Jackson died at his home at the age of 78.

With his wife, Jackson served as guardian of several wards or orphaned children. Not all resided at The Hermitage. Andrew Jackson Hutchings (1812-1841) was the grandson of one of Rachel's sisters and the son of a former business partner of Jackson's. His parents died by the time he was five. In 1817, Hutchings lived at The Hermitage. He attended school with Andrew Junior and Lyncoya, a Native American orphan, and then attended colleges in Washington and Virginia while Jackson was president. In 1833, he married Mary Coffee, a daughter of Jackson's friend John Coffee and the young couple moved to Alabama.