MRS. ANDREW JACKSON IN 1819. AGE 52. PAINTED BY ANNA C. PEALE.
Reproduced full size from the original miniature on ivory, painted by Anna Claypoole Peale and owned by Mrs. Rachel Jackson Lawrence, Old Hickory, Tennessee. Anna Claypoole Peale was born in Philadelphia, March 6, 1791, and died there December 25, 1878. She was the daughter of James Peale, the youngest brother of Charles Willson Peale, who was one of the best miniature painters this country has produced. Her maternal grandfather was James Claypoole, a limner of colonial days in the middle colonies, whose artistic ability is only known through his good training of his nephew Matthew Pratt, whose important picture of West's Studio is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Thus Anna Peale's artistic temperament was a double inheritance, and she painted miniatures very acceptably. She married first the Rev. Dr. William Staughton, and second General William Duncan, and is known in the art world by all three names, without the fact that the three belong to the same person being so generally known. She accompanied her uncle to Washington, as noted on page 795, and at this time painted portraits on ivory of both General and Mrs. Jackson, the latter in the costume she had worn at the ball given to General Jackson in New Orleans before his departure after the victory of the eighth of January. N. P. Trist, who became Jackson's private secretary early in the presidency, tells of going to the general's room one night after he had retired, and says: "I found Jackson sitting at a little table with his wife's miniature, a very large one, before him, propped up against some books, and between him and the picture an open book which bore the mark of long use. This book was her Prayer-Book. The miniature he always wore next to his heart, suspended around his neck by a strong black cord. The last thing he did every night before lying down to rest, was to read in that book with that picture before his eye." Mrs. Lawrence writes, "The miniature of Mrs. Rachel Jackson in my possession is of peculiar interest to me, from its having been so highly prized by my grandfather, so constantly worn by him, and the circumstances of its presentation by him to me. Early on Monday morning, June 2, 1845, as I was ready to leave the Hermitage for school in Nashville, I went to his room, as usual, to kiss and bid him good-by. He drew me nearer to him and said, 'Wait a moment, my baby,' his fond pet name for me, and taking this miniature from his vest pocket and the guard from around his neck, he put it around mine, and handed me the miniature. After looking at it a few moments, he said, 'Wear it, my baby, for Grandpa's sake. God bless you, my little Rachel.'"
