Rachel Donelson was born in present-day Halifax County in Virginia on June 15, 1767. Her father was Col. John Donelson, a well-to-do surveyor and member of the Virginia House of burgesses. Her mother was Rachel Stockley Donelson. Rachel was one of eleven children, seven boys and four girls.
In 1780, when Rachel was twelve years old, the family moved to the Nashville area of Tennessee. The journey involved a boat trip of some 2,000 miles during which the family faced many hardships, including Indian attacks. The family arrived safely and helped settle the new frontier town of Nashville, but the threat of Indian attacks was very real for a number of years after their arrival. Col. Donelson died a short time later on another expedition to Kentucky.
As a girl, Rachel was attractive and lively. She was an excellent dancer and one of the best horsewomen around. She was extremely popular, and a number of men courted her.
At the age of 17, she married Captain Lewis Robards of Kentucky. The marriage was not a success. Robards was apparently very tyrannical and very jealous, almost insanely so. He repeatedly accused Rachel of having affairs with other men in spite of her steadfast denials. Finally, she returned to her mother’s boarding house near Nashville. Robards came to retrieve his wife, and she returned to Kentucky with him. Before long, however, she again sought refuge in her mother’s boarding house.
When Robards next came to get his wife, a new boarder named Andrew Jackson protected her. After an altercation, Robards was sent on his way. Angry, he announced his intention to obtain a divorce, and filed papers with the state legislature necessary at the time to gain permission to sue for divorce. He sent word to Rachel about the divorce.
In the meantime, Rachel and the young lawyer Andrew Jackson fell in love, and they were married in August 1791. But Robards had not completed the divorce. In 1793, he sued in court for a divorce on the grounds of Rachel’s infidelity in living with another man while still married to Robards. The court granted the divorce on these grounds, and this judgment of infidelity and adultery haunted both Rachel and Andrew for the rest of their married life. When they discovered their marriage was not valid, Rachel and Andrew married again on January 17, 1794. In reality, this kind of legal confusion was not entirely unheard of in the western districts of Virginia (Kentucky was then part of Virginia) given the distance from the state capital and the inefficient means of communications of the day.
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