John Hutchings (November 20, 1817) was a nephew by marriage of American slave trader, militia leader, and U.S. president Andrew Jackson. He was Jackson's partner in his general stores,[1] and his slave-trading operation.[2]
Hutchings was a son of Rachel Donelson Robards Jackson's older sister Catherine Donelson. Hutchings may have been known as "Jackey" to friends and family.[3] According to the editors of The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Hutchings was "Jackson's partner in the Lebanon, Gallatin, and Hunter's Hill stores." Surviving letters from William C. C. Claiborne and Hutchings himself show that they were regularly providing Jackson with updates on Hutchings' success in selling "negroes" and horses that he had brought down from Tennessee to Mississippi.[4] Claiborne wrote to Jackson in 1801, "I can assure you, with great truth, that Mr. Hutchings is a prudent, amiable young man, & is very attentive to your Interest."[5] On Christmas Day 1801 Hutchings wrote Jackson with his own update, "I shall meet with no dificulty to sell the negres." A surviving letter from Hutchings to Jackson from an 1804 journey reporting on a journey from Stones River to New Orleans reads as follows:[6]
In 1811, Jackson wrote his wife Rachel from Natchez about his work with a coffle of slaves that, "My trusty friend John Hutchings, on the recpt of my letter had come down to this place recd. all the negroes on hand and had carried them up to his farm..."
During the fiercely contested 1828 presidential election, an opponent of Jackson editorialized about Hutchings possibly receiving preferential treatment and an unearned officer's commission during the War of 1812, asking, "Was not your nephew Capt. John Hutchings mustered into service (as Captain) the 1st October, 1814, and did he not immediately leave the service, and return home to attend your race horses, or his own, and never again joined the Army until after the battle of N. Orleans, of about that time, and all this with your knowledge and consent."[7]
According to the Tennessee State Library and Archives, which holds a collection of Hutchings family papers, "Jackson and Hutchings acquired large tracts of land near Milton's Bluff and in northern Alabama near Florence. Sometime after the Treaty of Fort Jackson (1814), Hutchings moved to Huntsville where he maintained a large plantation."[8]
John Hutchings married Mary Smith, who was the niece[9] or daughter of William Smith, a U.S. Senator from South Carolina.[10] William Smith built a house in Huntsville in 1833.[11]
He died in 1817 and is buried about 20 miles northeast of Athens, Alabama, under a marker commissioned by Jackson that reads:[12]
In 1818, the firm of Brahan & Hutchings of Huntsville, Alabama was cited as a reference in an advertisement for a commission merchant in Lexington, Kentucky.[13]
Andrew Jackson became the guardian of John and Polly Hutchings' orphaned son, Andrew Jackson Hutchings, and raised him at the Hermitage.[14] According to Harriet Chappell Owsley this was Hutchings' dying wish.[15] Andrew and Rachel Jackson traveled to Alabama to sit at Hutchings' deathbed; their trusted slave Hannah Jackson watched the Jacksons' adopted sons Andrew Jackson Jr. and Lyncoya Jackson while they were gone.[16]
Hutchings was educated at the Hermitage alongside Andrew Jackson Jr. and Lyncoya Jackson. He joined his cousins Andrew Jackson Jr., Samuel Jackson Hays, and Daniel Donelson in Washington in October 1829 during the first year of Jackson's presidency.[16] He eventually married Mary Coffee, a cousin and a daughter of Jackson's longtime ally John Coffee.[17] They had four children together, only one of whom survived to adulthood, dying in 1863. There is a surviving letter from Andrew Jackson to A. J. Hutchings advising him, "If you get in debt you will be a slave."[18] Andrew Jackson Hutchings died in 1841.