Lewis Robards (December 5, 1758 – April 15, 1814) was an American Revolutionary War veteran and Kentucky pioneer who is best remembered as the first husband of Rachel Jackson, who was later married to Andrew Jackson, elected U.S. president in 1828.
Biography
The seventh of his father's 13 children, Robards was born in Goochland County, Virginia. His family were slave-holding landowners. His mother was descended from First Families of Virginia types, his father had been a "militia lieutenant during the French and Indian War and...a member of Goochland County's Committee of Safety in 1775". The American Revolution began when Robards was a young man and he enlisted in May 1778 and by 1791 he had been promoted from second lieutenant to first lieutenant and up to captain; thus he is sometimes designated in histories as Captain Lewis Robards to distinguish him from relatives with similar names. He saw combat at Richmond and the James River and was present at the siege of Yorktown.
After the father died in Virginia in 1783, Lewis, several of his siblings, and his mother moved to Cane Run, Kentucky, where they owned several hundred acres that had been partially cleared. Historians do not have a clear picture of how Lewis Robards and Rachel Donelson met, although one story has it that Rachel's mother and her children rented a cabin for a time at the Robards settlement at Cane Run. According to one account published in 1884, "During a corn famine Gen. Donelson, with his family, went to Kentucky," and that's where Lewis and Rachel met. The couple married on March 1, 1785, at Harrodsburg, in what was considered an advantageous match between two prominent and wealthy frontier families. The marriage allowed 17-year-old Rachel to stay in Kentucky even though her father was moving back to Tennessee.
Historians generally use euphemistic language to convey that both parties to the marriage were rich and young, drank (possibly too much), and had affairs, and generally demonstrated poor emotional regulation. Lewis Robards allegedly "frequented the slave quarters at night"—and as a recent Smithsonian article points out, these sexual encounters were enslaved women "almost certainly without their consent." Rachel Donelson Robards may have had some kind of passionate entanglement with Peyton Short before Andrew Jackson came into the picture. Robards may have been a "son-of-a-bitch" and he may have been a slave trader. Another account describes him as "a rather suspicious-minded and jealous individual, who constantly quarreled with his wife and accused her of all manner of improprieties, some of which he himself was guilty. Robards also quarreled with Jackson and at one point Jackson threatened 'to cut the ears out of head.' At length Robards swore he would never live with Rachel again and left Nashville and returned to Kentucky." Another account has it that Robards contacted Rachel's mother and told her to come get her daughter because he wanted her out of their house. The Robards–Donelson–Jackson relationship controversy was an ongoing scandal that became an issue during the 1828 U.S. presidential election.
After his first marriage was a closed book, Lewis Robards married Hannah Winn. They had ten children together, including five sons, before Robards died in 1814. One of the sons, George Lewis Robards, served in the Battle of New Orleans (where Andrew Jackson came to national fame). Two of George Lewis Robards' sons, Lewis C. Robards and Alfred O. Robards, were slave traders in the Lexington, Kentucky area; they were implicated in multiple kidnapping into slavery cases. Lewis C. Robards was also notorious as a dealer in "fancy girls".
See also
- Andrew Jackson and the slave trade in the United States
- Springfield Plantation (Fayette, Mississippi)
References
- ^ Robards, James Harvey (1910). History and genealogy of the Robards family. Franklin, Indiana: W. R. Voris, Printer. pp. 31–33 – via Allen County Public Library, Internet Archive.
- ^ Toplovich (2005), p. 5.
- "Nashville Memories". Nashville Banner. December 6, 1884. p. 2. Retrieved 2024-09-05.
- ^ Toplovich (2005), p. 6.
- Toplovich (2005), pp. 6–7.
- Magazine, Smithsonian; Boissoneault, Lorraine. "Rachel Jackson, the Scandalous Divorcee Who Almost Became First Lady". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2024-08-26.
- ^ Toplovich (2005), pp. 7.
- Daniels, Jonathan (1971). The devil's backbone : the story of the Natchez Trace. Internet Archive. New York : McGraw-Hill. pp. 59–60. ISBN 978-0-07-015306-6.
- Remini, Robert V. (Summer 1991). "Andrew Jackson's Adventures on the Natchez Trace". Southern Quarterly. 29 (4). Hattiesburg, Mississippi: University of Southern Mississippi: 35–42. ISSN 0038-4496. OCLC 1644229.
- ^ Coleman, J. Winston. Slavery times in Kentucky / by J. Winston Coleman. State Library of Pennsylvania. University of North Carolina Press. pp. 157–163 – via Internet Archive.
Sources
- Toplovich, Ann (2005). "Marriage, Mayhem, and Presidential Politics: The Robards–Jackson Backcountry Scandal" (PDF). Ohio Valley History. 5 (4): 3–22. ISSN 2377-0600. Project MUSE 572973.