Lewis Robards

For his grandson, the Lexington slave trader, see Lewis C. Robards.

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. 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 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 Rachel Donelson Robards 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 [Robards's] 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 circumstances of the end of Rachel's relationship with Robards and transition to Jackson resurfaced as a campaign issue in the 1828 U.S. presidential election. Historians Robert V. Remini and Ann Toplovich make it clear that the official Jackson version presented during the election of 1828 is bunk: Jackson and Rachel Donelson Robards ran off to Natchez together sometime between December 1789 and July 1790, Robards filed for divorce in December 1790, the divorce was granted on grounds of adultery in September 1793, Robards unofficially remarried Hannah Winn in December 1792 and officially remarried her in November 1793, while Andrew Jackson and Rachel Donelson Robards were legally married in January 1794.

Lewis Robards and Hannah Winn 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".

Another grandson, William J. Robards, defended his grandfather's honor into the 20th century, as retold by the Louisville Herald in 1904:

"Historians say Mrs. Jackson's first marriage was an unhappy one, that she was superior to her environment, and that she abandoned the home of her husband in Kentucky and sought solace at the home of her mother in Tennessee near Nashville. These statements, the records of the courts and traditions of the Robards family do not verify, and William J. Robards, though prostrated with illness that may prove fatal and bearing heavily the weight of eighty-four years, becomes indignant whenever the subject is mentioned. He vehemently denounces Jackson for despoiling his ancestor's home and severely criticises historians who, in order to shield from a crime of his youth, the man who later became president of the United States, have placed his grandfather and family in a false position before posterity. 'Andrew Jackson despoiled my grandfather's home, stole his wife and married that woman two years before a divorce had been obtained,' exclaimed Mr. Robards with emphasis, 'and this after receiving the hospitalities of my grandfather's home. My grandfather was one of the highly esteemed men of his time in Kentucky, and his family was one of the most prominent in the territory, equal to, if not better, than that of the woman to whom he first married.'"

See also

• Andrew Jackson and the slave trade in the United States

References

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.