Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767, to Andrew and Elizabeth Hutchinson Jackson, Scots-Irish colonists who emigrated from Ireland in 1765. Though his birthplace is presumed to have been at one of his uncles' houses in the Waxhaws region that straddles North Carolina and South Carolina, the exact location is unknown—Jackson's mother was making a trip across the Appalachian Mountains after burying her husband, who died three weeks before his son was born.
Growing up in that area, Jackson received an erratic education. At age 13, he joined a local militia and served as a courier during the Revolutionary War. His older brother, Hugh, died in the Battle of Stono Ferry in 1779, and Andrew and his brother Robert were captured by the British. While in captivity the brothers contracted smallpox, from which Robert did not recover. A few days after the brothers were released by British authorities, Robert died. Not long after his brother's death, in November 1779, Jackson's mother died of cholera. At the age of 14, he was orphaned.
Raised by his uncles, Jackson began studying law in Salisbury, North Carolina, in his late teens. In 1787, he was admitted to the bar and became a lawyer in Jonesborough, an area that is now part of Tennessee.
In 1796, Jackson was a member of the convention that established the Tennessee Constitution and, that same year, was elected Tennessee's first representative in the U.S. House of Representative. He was elected to the Senate the following year, but resigned after serving only eight months. In 1798, Jackson was elected a judge of the Tennessee Supreme Court, serving in that position until 1804.
In addition to being a lawyer, politician and judge, Jackson was a landowner and a merchant. In 1804, he acquired an expansive plantation in Davidson County, Tennessee (near Nashville), called the Hermitage. He grew cotton, cultivated by a number of slaves, and soon became a member of the planting elite.
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