Lyncoya Jackson
circa 1811 — June 1, 1828 — The Hermitage, Tennessee
Lyncoya Jackson was a Creek Indian orphan who was adopted by General Andrew Jackson — later the seventh President of the United States — following the Battle of Tallushatchee in November 1813, and who lived in the Jackson household at The Hermitage near Nashville until his death from tuberculosis in 1828 at approximately age 17.
The Battle of Tallushatchee and Adoption
The story of Lyncoya Jackson begins in the blood and smoke of the Creek War. On November 3, 1813, General Andrew Jackson's forces attacked the Creek village of Tallushatchee in present-day Alabama in a brutal assault that killed approximately 186 Creek warriors. Among the carnage, soldiers found an infant boy — later reported to be about two or three years old — who had survived the battle with his dead mother nearby. According to accounts, other Creek women in the village refused to care for the child, reportedly saying that all his relatives had been killed and he should die too. General Jackson, moved by the infant's situation and drawing explicit parallels to his own orphaned childhood, chose to adopt the child and sent him to Rachel Jackson at The Hermitage in Nashville.
Life at The Hermitage
Jackson named the boy Lyncoya and treated him as a member of his household — though the exact nature of that relationship, in an antebellum Tennessee plantation household that also included enslaved people, was complex. Jackson wrote about Lyncoya with evident affection, describing him in letters as being raised "like one of my own family" and expressing hopes for his education. He considered sending Lyncoya to West Point Military Academy, though that plan was never realized. Lyncoya grew up at The Hermitage alongside the Jacksons' adopted son Andrew Jackson Jr. and in the company of the household's enslaved workers, occupying an unusual and ambiguous social position in one of the most prominent homes in Tennessee.
Did You Know?
Andrew Jackson's decision to adopt Lyncoya has been interpreted in widely different ways by historians. Some view it as a genuine act of humanitarian compassion — consistent with Jackson's own narrative of himself as a self-made orphan who understood abandonment. Others point to the profound contradiction of a man who, as president, would sign the Indian Removal Act of 1830 — forcing the displacement and death of tens of thousands of Native Americans including the Creek people — having personally adopted a Creek child. The tension between Jackson's personal affection for Lyncoya and his political actions toward Native American peoples as a whole is one of the most striking contradictions in American presidential history.
Death and Historical Memory
Lyncoya died on June 1, 1828, at The Hermitage, of tuberculosis — a disease that claimed many young people on the frontier. He was approximately 17 years old. Jackson was informed of his death while on the campaign trail during the 1828 presidential election (which he won, becoming the 7th President). By some accounts Jackson was deeply grieved. Lyncoya's grave is believed to be on the grounds of The Hermitage, though the exact location was lost over time. His brief life — full of extraordinary circumstance, beginning in the violence of colonial warfare and ending in the household of the future president — makes him one of the most poignant and historically complex figures of early American history.