Two Carolina counties clash in a battle befitting a war hero : 224 years later, Andrew Jackson's place of birth is open to dispute. Civic pride--and a piece of history--are at stake as two areas claim 'Old Hickory' as their own.

Two Carolina counties clash in a battle befitting a war hero : 224 years later, Andrew Jackson’s place of birth is open to dispute. Civic pride--and a piece of history--are at stake as two areas claim ‘Old Hickory’ as their own.

By LYN RIDDLE

Nov. 11, 1991 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

WAXHAW, N.C. — Andrew Jackson’s uncertain birthplace may be a simple footnote to history, but to the folks living in the two counties straddling the North and South Carolina border, it is as important as Sunday dinners and high school football.

Road signs and murals in both counties--Union to the north and Lancaster to the south--proclaim Jackson a native son in a controversy whose intensity is matched only by the annual late summer gridiron clash between area high schools.

And now, the long-simmering dispute has moved a few degrees closer to the boiling point with the completion this summer of a $750,000 museum in Jackson’s honor in this little town about 30 miles southeast of Charlotte, N.C.

South Carolina history buffs are happy to see such a fine building dedicated to Jackson, but say unequivocally: It’s on the wrong side of the line.

“Pretty soon they’ll be trying to claim more Presidents than Virginia,” quipped D. Lindsay Pettus, a Lancaster, S.C., real estate broker who is active in his county’s historical society. “Let’s just say we’re amused by it.”

Some 224 years later, Jackson’s birthplace remains unsettled because his mother, who was a recent widow at the time, moved in with two of her sisters. One sister lived in South Carolina, the other in North Carolina and no one knows precisely which house Mrs. Jackson was in when her son came into the world on March 15, 1767.

Encyclopedias duck the question, identifying Jackson’s birthplace as “Waxhaw area, N.C-S.C. border.” Before Jackson’s father died, three weeks before his son’s birth, the family lived in North Carolina.

But circumstantial evidence strongly favors South Carolina’s claim, historians say.

Dr. Robert Remini, a retired University of Illinois historian who is considered an expert on Jackson, said Jackson considered himself a South Carolinian.

“I figure everybody knows where (they themselves were) born,” Remini said, “but there is no absolute evidence either way. I assume he asked his mother.”

Remini pointed to a letter Jackson wrote in 1824 to a Lancaster County, S.C., man, in which he says flatly: “I was born in South Carolina, as I have been told.”

But Remini said he likes the ongoing debate between the states because it keeps people thinking about the war hero known as “Old Hickory,” who served as America’s strong-willed seventh President. Jackson spent most of his 78 years in Tennessee, where he is buried. His home on 660 acres, the Hermitage, is open to the public.

To denote its place in history, South Carolina has done its share to remember Jackson, who left the Waxhaw area at 18 years of age, never to return. The spot where South Carolinians say Jackson was born serves as the centerpiece for the Andrew Jackson State Park on 350 acres just north of the town of Lancaster, S.C. The park, established in 1952, attracts 10,000 visitors a year. The park includes a museum of artifacts and furniture from the Jackson era, a meeting house most often used for weddings, a one-room schoolhouse, a picnic shelter, a large lake and a lifelike statue of a young Andrew Jackson riding a horse.

North Carolina’s shrine stands some eight miles to the north. The modern facility is equipped with an attractive reception area, a classroom, kitchen, storage area and 2,000-square-foot exhibit area. All empty, so far.

The local committee that secured the town land and state funding for the Jackson museum hopes to rectify that with a reception in Charlotte on Nov. 22. Money raised with the $100-per-person tickets will go to hire a director.

“We hope to have classes in the building, which is right next door to the new elementary school, and to explain the history of the Waxhaw area beginning with the history of the Waxhaws (Indians) right up to the present,” said Gladys Kerr, a committee member and a professor at Wingate College in Wingate, N.C.

Asked about South Carolina’s “amusement” over their claim to Jackson, Kerr said: “Who knows where he was born? We have no fight with our friends in South Carolina.”

Countered Pettus, the South Carolina real estate broker: “Some people look upon North and South Carolina as one place: Carolina. They don’t know the difference, but there is a difference when it comes to this and there is no question about where Jackson was born.”

What’s more, added Pettus in a burst of local pride, his county’s high schools have never lost the Big Game.