Andy, never tell a lie

Elizabeth Jackson, Charleston, SC   

Elizabeth Hutchinson Jackson gave birth to future President Andrew Jackson while on a trip back from burying her dead husband. When Andrew was 14, she died from smallpox while caring for sick Revolutionary War soldiers aboard a British prison ship. No one knows exactly where she's buried but that it was a few miles north of Charleston. 

Jackson wrote: “I knew she died near Charleston, having visited that City with several matrons to afford relief to our prisoners with the British - not her son as you suppose, for at that time my two Elder brothers were no more; but two of her Nephews, William and Joseph Crawford Sons of James Crawford then deceased. I well recollect one of the matrons that went with her was Mrs. Boyd. It is possible Mrs. Barton can inform me where she was buried that I can find her grave. This to me would be great satisfaction, that I might collect her bones and inter them with that of my father and brothers.”

Robert Behr - Post & Courier: wrote an article a few years ago describing how this marker came to be placed on the College of Charleston campus. 

This marker was moved there in 1967 by well-intended folks who wanted to rescue it from its original location about 2 1/2 miles uptown. In 1942, several service members at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island responded to a newspaper's call to honor Mrs. Jackson. These men, who mostly hailed from Columbia, commissioned the marker and placed it in a railroad right of way - a sort of no man's land just east of King Street Extension and Heriot Street.

Andy, never tell a lie......

Near this spot is buried Elizabeth Jackson
Mother of President Andrew Jackson
She gave her life cheerfully for
the Independence of her country
on an unrecorded date in Nov, 1791
And to her son Andy this advice:
"Andy, never tell a lie,
nor take what is not your own,
nor sue for slander,
settle those cases yourself."

During the Revolutionary War, 14 year old Andrew Jackson and his older brother Robert were captured by British soldiers in the Battle of Hanging Rock. The officer in command ordered Jackson to clean his boots. Jackson refused. The officer raised his sword to strike a violent blow at the boy's head. Jackson ducked and threw up his left hand. "It was cut to the bone, and a gash on his head left a white scar that Andrew Jackson carried through a long life that profited little to England or any Englishman."

Jackson's mother persuaded the British to release her boys, but by this time both had contracted smallpox. Jackson's mother and his critically ill brother rode horseback on the 45 mile journey home. Andrew walked barefoot and without a jacket, despite a driving rain the last day of the trek. Robert died two days later. Andrew was delirious and in mortal danger. Over several months, he slowly recovered. When Andrew seemed out of danger, his mother left to nurse prisoners of war in Charleston, but contracted cholera there and died.

I spotted this marker while taking a shortcut through the College of Charleston campus.