Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: Sandra Hughes
Taken: September 25, 2010
Caption: Hannah Jackson c1880 (pic in museum)
Additional Description: I fear all our servants will leave us. Nancy, Hannah, Martha, and her three children are all gone. We have nothing but black looks from all of them they are very unwilling to do any work – it is with difficulty we can get anything out of them. Drs. Joe Smith left a day or two ago, he is looking daily for others to go. Affairs are in a deplorable situation here…
-Sarah Yorke Jackson to Samuel Jackson, June 22, 1863

[Text in photo] Hannah married another Hermitage slave, Aaron in 1817. Hannah was the head of the household slaves and Aaron was the Hermitage blacksmith. Aaron also “preached occasionally,” according to Hannah. The two were married for many decades as were the majority of Hermitage slaves. They had ten children together. From 1859 to 1860, when the Jackson family lived in Mississippi, Hannah and Aaron were entrusted to look after The Hermitage. During the Civil War though, Hannah fled The Hermitage for Nashville, where she practiced midwifery and lived with one of her sons and two widowed daughters. Hannah, in an interview after Aaron’s death (age 93), mourned her loss: “We lived so long together, when he died I thought my poor old heart would break. I prayed God to take me too”.
Submitted: February 9, 2012, by Sandra Hughes Tidwell of Killen, Alabama, USA.
Database Locator Identification Number: p192150
File Size: 1.672 Megabytes

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