Old Hickory: It's Not About the Wood RoadyGoat

1918

Roll into Old Hickory and you'd swear the name is about timber or some old industrial trade. And the industry is real: in nineteen eighteen, DuPont threw up the biggest smokeless-gunpowder plant in the world right here on Hadley's Bend to feed the guns of World War One. Tens of thousands of workers, half a million pounds of powder a day. But the name has nothing to do with hickory wood or the plant. DuPont named the town for Andrew Jackson, the seventh president, whose tough battlefield reputation earned him the nickname 'Old Hickory.' His Hermitage estate sits just up the road. The powder boomtown is named after a man, not a material.

15.3 mi away

The Duel: Andrew Jackson Takes a Bullet to Buy His Aim, 1806 RoadyGoat

1806

The marker on the Adairville square points two miles west, to the Red River bottoms on the old Jeff Burr farm, where on May 30, 1806, Andrew Jackson shot and killed Charles Dickinson. Both men were Tennesseans; they crossed the state line not because dueling was legal in Kentucky (it was illegal here too) but to put themselves out of reach of Tennessee's authorities. The quarrel began over a forfeited horse-race wager between Jackson's stallion Truxton and Ploughboy, owned by Dickinson's father-in-law, and curdled in the newspapers until Dickinson printed that Jackson was "a worthless scoundrel, a poltroon, and a coward." (Dickinson had also, while drunk, insulted Jackson's wife Rachel, and apologized; Jackson had let that go.) Dickinson was the finest pistol shot in Tennessee, so Jackson and his second, Thomas Overton, made a cold decision: let Dickinson fire first, absorb it, then aim at leisure. Dickinson fired. Dust puffed from Jackson's coat. Jackson did not fall; he put a hand to his chest and stood. Dickinson recoiled from his mark, crying "Great God! Have I missed him?", and Overton forced him back to stand and take his return fire. Jackson pulled the trigger and the pistol stopped at half-cock. He drew the hammer back, aimed again, and fired; Dickinson bled to death by dusk. Jackson's biographer James Parton wrote that Dickinson's "aim had been perfect. He had sent the ball precisely where he supposed Jackson's heart was beating. But the thinness of his body and the looseness of his coat combining to deceive Dickinson, the ball had only broken a rib or two." Whether Jackson had the RIGHT to re-cock was argued bitterly and never settled: a "snap" normally counted as your shot, but Jackson's hammer never fell at all. His seconds certified the duel fair; Dickinson's father-in-law published that Jackson had taken an "unguarded, illiberal and unjust advantage." Jackson walked off concealing the wound so Dickinson would die believing he had missed, and only later did his surgeon notice a shoe full of blood. The ball lodged too near his heart to cut out, and he carried it for the remaining thirty-nine years of his life. (Sources: Kentucky Historical Marker #100; Library of Congress; Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson, 1859.)

RoadyGoat → · 17.6 mi away

Old Hickory's Cussing Parrot Crashed His Funeral RoadyGoat

1845

Andrew Jackson died at the Hermitage, his home outside Nashville, Tennessee, on June eighth, eighteen forty-five. Two days later, on June tenth, his funeral was held at the house, with mourners crowded onto the porch and out across the lawn. And by the most famous account of that day, the solemn service was nearly stolen by a parrot. Jackson had bought a grey parrot named Poll for his wife Rachel back in eighteen twenty-seven, paying twenty-five dollars for it. After Rachel died, the old president doted on the bird for the rest of his life, and somewhere along the way Poll had picked up language that did not belong at a funeral. As the crowd gathered, the parrot got worked up and let loose what one witness called perfect gusts of cuss words, swearing so loud and so long that the bird had to be carried out of the house. The tale comes from William Norment, who was a teenager at the funeral and did not set it down on paper until he was in his nineties, so historians treat it as a beloved but unverified legend. True or not, it is a fitting send-off for the most pugnacious president the country ever had.

18.0 mi away

Grand Ole Opry House

1925

The longest-running radio broadcast in American history, airing continuously since 1925, now based at the Opry House in the Opryland complex.

18.4 mi away

The Hermitage - Andrew Jackson Home

1804

The plantation home of Andrew Jackson, seventh President of the United States, who lived here from 1804 until his death in 1845.

18.0 mi away

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Old Hickory: It's Not About the Wood RoadyGoat

The Duel: Andrew Jackson Takes a Bullet to Buy His Aim, 1806 RoadyGoat

Old Hickory's Cussing Parrot Crashed His Funeral RoadyGoat

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The Hermitage - Andrew Jackson Home

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