Indigenous members of the Andrew Jackson household

Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, and his wife Rachel Donelson Robards Jackson had no biological children together but served as guardians to a large number of children, several of whom lived at the Hermitage at one time or another. Many of these children were members of the extended Donelson family, others were the children of Jackson's friends. Andrew Jackson also sent home three male Native American babies or children, who were called Charley, Theodore, and Lyncoya, who were collected before and during the Creek War, a subconflict of the War of 1812 and the first of Jackson's decades-long military and political campaigns to ethnically cleanse the south for white settlers so that their black slaves could plant cotton, a highly profitable cash crop. Lyncoya has been described as having been "adopted" by the Jacksons but there are no known documents attesting to any form of legal adoption. This was also the case for "the only ward that he and Rachel considered to be a child of theirs," Andrew Jackson Jr. There are no judicial or legislative records any of these "adoptions" (contra many probate records designating Jackson as a legal guardian for surviving minor heirs), and statutory family law was essentially non-existent in early 1800s Tennessee.