Sarah Yorke Jackson
While Emily Donelson served as Andrew Jackson's hostess in the White House, it was originally intended that his daughter-in-law, Sarah Yorke Jackson, the wife of his adopted son would supervise the management of the Hermitage. A fire at the Hermitage, however, brought Sarah Yorke Jackson to the White House for lengthier stays and so she and Emily Donelson essentially served as co-hostesses, a unique situation in White House history.
It is not clear how Sarah Yorke met Andrew Jackson, Jr. President Jackson was unable to attend their November 24, 1831 wedding at the First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, but he sent the portrait painter and family friend Ralph Earl to represent him and present the bride with the gift of a pearl ring which contained a locket of the President's hair. The couple proceeded immediately to the White House, where the President stood on the front steps with open arms to greet her. He showed immediate affection to his daughter-in-law and they remained close until his death. The President held a number of parties in her honor, including a dinner to which the Cabinet and Diplomatic Corps were invited and she wore her wedding gown at the series of events. She and her husband remained at the White House through the holiday season of 1831 and the social season of 1832. She arrived at the Hermitage in late spring of 1832 to assume the management with her husband of the plantation. She gave birth there to her first child, named for the president's late wife, Rachel, in November. Sarah Jackson's cousin Emma Yorke Farquhar accompanied her to the White House and the Hermitage and married there Andrew Jackson, Jr.'s twin brother, Thomas Jefferson Donelson on 17 September, 1832. Sarah Yorke Jackson returned to the White House in February of 1833 for the second Jackson Inauguration. She remained there through the summer when she and her family joined the president at his seaside vacation in Virginia. She returned to the Hermitage in August. Her second child, Andrew, was born there in April 1834.
During that stay, however, a fire partially destroyed the Hermitage and required rebuilding. Thus, Sarah Yorke Jackson once again returned to the White House, arriving on 26 November 1834. She was accompanied by Emily Donelson and to avoid any questions of who took precedence as the President's official hostess, Jackson declared Sarah Jackson to be "mistress of the Hermitage," and implied that he viewed that as more personally dear to him; there is no evidence of any rivalry between the two women who then essentially functioned as co-hostesses. In February 1835, however, Sarah Yorke Jackson made an extended visit with her children to relatives in Philadelphia and did not rejoin the presidential household until that summer when she was part of the family again vacationing in Virginia and from there she returned to Philadelphia for a month. Part of her time in that city was spent ordering new furnishings for the Hermitage. She and Emily Donelson helped to host a large Christmas party for the children of the family in the White House, in December of 1835. She once again returned to the Hermitage in the spring of 1836 and then for one last time came back toWashingtonin the fall of 1836. She visited with her Philadelphia relatives before overseeing the packing and shipping ofJackson's eight years worth of possessions in the White House as he prepared to retire in March of 1837.
Upon Jackson's retirement, Sarah Jackson and her family returned with him to the Hermitage, and she resumed charge of his household. Three more children - Samuel, Thomas, and Robert - would be born to Sarah Yorke Jackson at the Hermitage. Shortly thereafter, Sarah's widowed sister Marion Adams came to live there as well, with her three sons, John, Andrew, and William.
