Lewis Robards


Lewis Robards 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, who was elected the seventh U.S. president, in 1828.

Biography

The seventh of his father's 13 children, Robards was born in Goochland County, Virginia. His mother was descended from one of the First Families of Virginia, 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. By 1791 he had been promoted from second lieutenant to first lieutenant and up to captain, thus he is sometimes designated as Captain Lewis Robards, in part to distinguish him from relatives with identical 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, in what is now Mercer County, where they owned several hundred acres that had been partially cleared. A 1913 history of Tennessee written by Will T. Hale and Dixon L. Merritt, quoting from a possibly-never-published manuscript history of the Green River area written by Lucius P. Little, provides some additional detail on the Robards family:
Mary Emily Donelson Wilcox, daughter of Andrew Jackson Donelson and Emily Tennessee Donelson added to this family narrative that Elizabeth Robards Davis married second Davis Floyd, and that the youngest Robards sister married "William Buckner, ancestor of General Simon Bolivar Buckner. Their mother, proud and high-spirited, was considered the most influential personage in the Blue Grass region." The Robards genealogy also states that Thomas Davis and Andrew Jackson's old partner John Overton were "distant relatives."
According to one account published in 1884, the meeting of the two families was not happenstance prompted a storm but rather prompted by hunger: "During a corn famine Gen. Donelson, with his family, went to Kentucky." 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 to 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, and had affairs, and generally demonstrated poor emotional regulation. Lewis Robards allegedly "frequented the slave quarters at night"—and as a recent Smithsonian article points out, these sexual encounters were enslaved women "almost certainly without their consent." Rachel Donelson Robards may have 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 head.' At length Robards swore he would never live with Rachel again and left Nashville and returned to Kentucky." Still 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. In 1789, Andrew Jackson and Rachel Donelson Robards ran off together to the Natchez District, and eventually Robards sued Rachel for divorce on grounds of adultery. The Robards–Donelson–Jackson relationship controversy has been an ongoing scandal ever since, not to mention a major issue during the 1828 U.S. presidential election.
After his first marriage was a closed book, Lewis Robards married Hannah Winn. They had ten children together before Robards died in 1814. In the account of Little, "A year or so after the granting of his divorce Captain Robards married a lovely refined woman, whom he took to his Mercer county home. Happily mated, he realized his brightest dreams of domestic life. His children grew up around him, and fulfilled all reasonable parental hopes. A home on a farm of broad acres in the Blue Grass region of Kentucky in the first half of the nineteenth century was quite enough to realize all the aspirations of the home-loving heart."
His sister, Sarah "Sally" Robards was the wife of Jack Jouett, whose ride to warn legislators, including Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson of Tartleton's plan to kidnap them at Monticello, is considered more prolific than Paul Revere's midnight ride. Their son, Lewis's nephew, Matthew Harris Jouett, was an American portraitist who studied under Gilbert Stuart.

Lewis Robards v. Andrew Jackson

One of Robards' descendants, grandson William J. Robards, defended his grandfather's honor into the 20th century, as retold by the Louisville Herald in 1904:
The relationship between Jackson and Robards is the least understood aspect of the triangle.
  • In 1806, during the leadup to the Jackson–Charles Dickinson duel, Nathaniel McNairy wrote a letter to Thomas Eastin that was printed in the Impartial Review, in which he charged Jackson with "cowardice, citing his attacks on Swann and Sevier and his firing a pistol at '...a man that has none, and driv him off to Kentucky...'," which may be a reference to Robards.
  • Jesse Benton claimed in an anti-Jackson pamphlet in 1824 that "Tradition tells us, that some thirty years ago, he made an attack upon an unarmed man, named Roberts, himself literally loaded with arms."
  • In 1828 a political opponent stated that "The General had been but a short time residing in West Tennessee near Nashville, before he had a rencontre with the late Lewis Roberts, who swore his life against him, and Jackson was bound over to keep the peace by Col. Robert Weakly, who is now livingRoberts had not then separated from the present Mrs. Jackson. I could add many circumstances illustrative of this matterbut do not wish to injure the feelings of any unnecessarily, especially as I have always considered Mrs. Jackson ever since my acquaintance with her in 1814, as a female of virtue, and upright walk in life."
  • In 1854, a resident of Rodney, Mississippi, who went by the pseudonym Idler, wrote, "One of the primitive settlers, who further stated that they were married in either Jefferson or Claiborne county, though Old Mock, the miller, who resided near Danville, Ky., doubts the marriage, and he says Jackson stole Roberts' wife and afterwards paid him for her and that Roberts was delighted to get rid of her on such easy terms. But whether married or not, they lived together happily for many years, and when she died he mourned as one who had lost all that gave value to life."
  • John R. Irelan in his 18-volume history of presidential administrations claimed, "Lewis Robards had had Jackson arrested at Nashville for threats upon his peace and life, and he afterwards chased Robards with a butcher-knife, and ran him out of the settlement because Robards persisted in regarding his conduct as dishonorable towards Mrs. Robards."
  • Folklore presented as such, but recited nonetheless by the Robards genealogy, states, "...when Robards returned home and found that his wife was gone with Jackson, he followed in hot pursuit with his body servant until they reached a stream near the Tennessee line called Bear Wallow. Here he found that they had crossed the stream by ferry, which was detained on the other side, cutting off his farther progress. His servant, to the day of his death gave graphic accounts of the chase, and stated that Robards and Jackson exchanged shots from the opposite sides of the river, and Jackson, fearing for the safety of the woman, hastened on his journey, while Robards returned home to consider his future course. The people living in the vicinity of Bear Wallow used to point out to strangers a tree upon the bank of the river scarred, they said, by the shots."
The only surviving documentation of the relationship between Jackson and Robards are letters that do not mention Rachel but relate to business. In 1797 Jackson bought a place called Hunter's Hill that was Robards' original land grant in Tennessee and where Mr. and Mrs. Robards were to settle. There is also a letter from Robards to Robert Hays, Jackson's brother-in-law, about the dispensation of John Donelson's estate.

Descendants

  1. Mortimer Delvin Robards m. Liddie Shain
  2. George Lewis Robards
  3. James Winn Robards m. Rachel Shain
  4. W. J. Robards
  5. Alfred J. Robards
  6. Granville Robards
  7. Robert Robards
  8. Benjamin Franklin Robards
  9. Eliza Robards
  10. Margaret Lewis Robards m. Squire Shain
George Lewis Robards served in the Battle of New Orleans. 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".