The Donelson family of Tennessee, which included Andrew Jackson amongst its number, was an influential family of the U.S. South before the American Civil War. As an 1859 history told it, "Taking Colonel Donelson as the radix, and tracing out the descendants and connections for the last fifty years, we find, especially in the South and Southwest, the alliance to be extensive and influential in political and military position...The ramifications down to the present day are too numerous and widespread to be inserted in this work." An 1880 history of Tennessee concurred that the legacy of the family was substantial: "[John Donelson's] descendants and connections for nearly three-fourths of a century in the South and Southwest have been extensive and influential both in civil and military affairs."
John Donelson was an early pioneer of the middle Tennessee area of the United States. Rachel Stockley Donelson was delivered of 11 children who survived to adulthood. Seven of the Donelson siblings married and started families, producing an average of nine children per family. Their daughter Rachel Donelson's second husband was Andrew Jackson, who became the seventh president of the United States in 1828. The family originated in the Thirteen Colonies but over time established branches in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and beyond. In the telling of Jackson biographer Mark R. Cheathem, "Orphaned and alone, Jackson replaced the family he had lost with a kinship network composed of his wife's extended family and his political allies. He valued these political and familial kin because they gave his world economic and emotional stability."
As per the editors of The Papers of Andrew Jackson, "The marriages of Rachel Jackson's brothers and sisters produced more than 50 adult children and innumerable grandchildren." The descendants of John Donelson are collectively notable because in marrying into the family, Andrew Jackson "gained an army of brothers, literally, and together these members of the kinship network created an efficient system that provided profits for all. Few other frontier families would employ family networking quite so effectively, but while their strategies were exceptionally efficient, they were also representative of the types of networking that was going on, usually on a smaller scale." Jackson and his Donelson kinsmen, and friends, engaged in what has been described as vertically integrated family-business imperialism: "They fought the native peoples, negotiated the treaties to end the fighting and demanded native lands as the price of war, surveyed the newly available lands, bought those lands, litigated over disputed boundaries, adjudicated the cases, and made and kept laws within the region that had been carved out of Indian lands." The lands that the Donelsons examined and collected were intended for use by "free, white, propertied citizens," including slave owners, not for the Indigenous people who already lived there.
Andrew Jackson, who had no biological children of his own but served as patriarch of the clan, supplemented the "literal army" designation by obtaining appointments to the U.S. Military Academy for his nephews Andrew Jackson Donelson, Daniel Smith Donelson, and Samuel Jackson Hays; his grand-nephews Earl Van Dorn, Richard Hays, and Andrew Jackson Coffee; and ward Edward G. W. Butler. He also used his influence in an attempt to obtain academy appointment for the sons of allies living and dead, including the son of his deceased War of 1812 aide-de-camp John S. Reid and the sons of Virginian politician William Giles. Intriguingly, Congressman Davy Crockett, who started out as a Tennessee militiaman in Jackson's Creek War, wanted to abolish West Point on the grounds that "only the sons of the rich and influential could get into the Academy, and that the bounty of the government should go to the poor rather than the rich."David Crockett: Congressman - By Stanley J. Folmsbee and Anna Grace Catron - No. 29 (1957) - East Tennessee Historical Society's Publications - p. 62
Many members of the earliest iteration of the clan settled in "the Hermitage neighborhood [that] was regarded as the best section of Davidson County, the soil being better adapted for cotton than any other part of the country, and was settled by wealthy men and cotton-planters; among them were Gen. Jackson, Col. Edward Ward (who was speaker of the Senate in 1817, a man of talent and fine personal appearance, was a candidate for Governor, and beaten for that office by Gen. William Carroll), Maj. William Ward, Capt. John Donelson, the brother of Mrs. Jackson and the father of Mrs. Gen. Coffee, Mrs. McLemore, Mrs. William Easton, Mrs. James Martin, and Mrs. Andrew J. Donelson. Capt. Donelson was a wealthy man in lands and slaves, and a successful planter. Sevan [Leven?] and Severn Donelson were also brothers of Mrs. Jackson. Gen. Thomas Overton, the friend of Gen. Jackson in the duel with Charles Dickinson, Dr. Hadley, Capt. Moseley, the step-father of John L. Brown, of Nashville, and others, all lived in this neighborhood. There also lived here John Anthony Winston and brother, two very prominent men, who emigrated to Alabama and settled near Tuscumbia. They are the ancestors of the numerous Winstons in that State, among whom was Governor John A. Winston."
1. Alexander "Sandy" Donelson (unmarried, no issue)
2. Mary "Mattie" Donelson m. John Caffery; Caffery was part of Donelson's expedition on the Adventure. In October 1800, Caffrey advertised that he would soon "descend the river to New Orleans" in boats that were being constructed at Lancaster's saw-mill at the confluence of Caney Fork and the Cumberland River near present-day Carthage, Tennessee. In 1936 a descendant wrote, "Their home was in Natchez, Miss., where John Caffery was engaged in the mercantile business, in the employ of Andrew Jackson." An 1807 journal of the Natchez Trace suggests that she may have lived northeast of the Grindstone Ford. He was on the 1810 census for the combined Claiborne-Warren County census in Mississippi. Caffery & Jackson paid taxes on 35 slaves in Attakapas in 1810, present-day St. Mary Parish, Louisiana—this might be one of the sons and Washington Jackson.
2.1. John Caffery Jr. m. Catherine Smith; Caffrey served in the Creek War and "killed an Indian" at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend
2.2. Rachel Caffery m. George Walker
2.3. Sarah Caffery m. John Walker
2.3.?. John George Walker
2.4. Eliza Caffery m. Abraham Green
2.5. Mary "Patsy" Caffery m. John Knox
2.5.1. Sarah Knox m. (a) Benjamin Newton, (b) Dr. Arva Wilson, (c) George Washington Sevier Jr.; many descendants of Knox's third marriage in Madison Parish, Louisiana
2.5.1c.1. Mary Catherine Sevier
2.5.1c.2. George Washington Sevier III
2.5.1c.3. Andrew Jackson Sevier
2.5.1c.4. Jennie Vertner Sevier
2.5.1c.5. Eliza Donelson Sevier
2.5.3. William Lucky Knox
2.6. Nancy Caffery m. John Jenkins
2.6.? Donelson Jenkins
2.7. Sophia Caffery m. Peter Aaron Van Dorn
2.7.1. Mary Van Dorn m. John Overton Lacey
2.7.2. Jane Van Dorn m. John David Vertner
2.7.2.1. Daniel Vertner
2.7.2.2. Margaret Dunlop Vertner
2.7.2.3. Aaron Van Dorn Vertner, lieutenant, Confederate States Army; aide to his uncle Gen. Van Dorn and then to General Thomas C. Hindman; killed at Shiloh
2.7.2.4. J. D. Vertner, Mississippi State Senator
2.7.3. Octavia Van Dorn m. (a) Alison Ross, (b) Vance Murray Sulivane
2.7.3a.1. Isaac Allison Ross m. Eugenia Calhoun
2.7.3b.1. Clement Sulivane
2.7.3b.2. Octavia Sulivane
2.7.4. Earl Van Dorn m. Caroline Godblod; he was awarded a West Point commission by intervention of Andrew Jackson
2.7.4.1. Olivia Van Dorn, married w four children
2.7.4.2. Earl Van Dorn Jr.
2.7.5. Aaron Van Dorn, an important early cartographer of Death Valley
2.7.6. Mabella Van Dorn; died in childhood; her sister Octavia survived the same illness
2.7.7. Sarah Ross Van Dorn, died as a child
2.7.8. Emily Donelson Van Dorn m. William Trigg Miller; Emily Van Dorn Miller is believed to have written A Soldier's Honor (1902) about her brother Earl Van Dorn's military career
2.7.8.?. Thomas Marshall Miller, attorney general of Mississippi
2.7.9. Jacob Van Dorn, died as a child
2.8. Donelson Caffery m. Lydia Murphy, "wages and expenses" for him listed on a bill of "Aaron Burr in account with Andrew Jackson"; lived in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana in the 1810s; in 1813, bought land near Franklin, Louisiana and Bayou Teche that became Alexander Porter's Oak Lawn plantation with Washington Jackson; at the time of the 1828 U.S. presidential election, Joshua Baker wrote the Virginia Advocate that "This conversation [with an acquaintance of Aaron Burr] awakened General Jackson's suspicions, for he wrote to Governor Claiborne, putting him upon his guard against Burr...General Jackson also recalled from the service of Burr all his young relatives who had been induced to join Burr under the belief that he was going to revolutionize the Spanish dominions in North America. Mr. Caffrey was one of them. I think (though I will not be positive,) that Mr. C. showed me Gen. J's letter to him, advising him to abandon Burr"; appointed during the Jackson administration and served briefly in 1831 as collector of customs for the district of Teche and inspector of the revenue for the port of Franklin, Louisiana
2.9.1. Donelson Caffery II m. Bethia Richardson; family archive held in special collections at University of North CarolinaCollection Number: 02227 — Collection Title: Caffery Family Papers, 1838-1925 – https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/02227/
2.9.1.1. Donelson Caffrey III
2.9.1.2. Francis "Frank" Caffery
2.9.1.3. Ralph Earl Caffery
2.9.1.3.10. Patrick T. Caffery
2.9.1.4. Gertrude Caffery
2.9.1.5. John Murphy Caffery m. Mary Temperance Free; U.S. Naval Academy, businessman, Louisiana State Senator, lived Franklin, Louisiana
2.9.1.6. St. John Liddell "Liddell" Caffrey
2.9.1.7. Bethia Richardson Caffery
2.9.1.8. Charles Smith Caffery, U.S. Army colonel, author of the Caffery family history/genealogy
2.9.1.9. Edward Webster Caffery
2.9.2. Emma Caffery m. Patrick Hardiman Thomson
2.10. Jane Caffery m. Ralph E. W. Earl
2.11. Jefferson Caffery m. Marie Alix Demarest; he owned 75 slaves in the vicinity of Bayou Teche in 1820; for more on a Caffery in the vicinity of Irish Bend on Bayou Teche see memoirs of Martha Martin
2.11.3. Jefferson Jackson Caffery m. Anna Maria Crow
2.11.3.3. Charles Duval Caffery m. Mary Catherine Parkerson; mayor of Lafayette, Louisiana
2.11.3.3.1. Jefferson Caffery
3. Catherine Donelson m. Thomas Hutchings; Catherine was born in Pittsylvania County, Virginia; like three of the Donelson brothers and Robert Hays, Hutchings worked as a land surveyor; Hutchings was part of Donelson's expedition on the Adventure
3.1. John Hutchings m. Mary "Polly" Smith; served in the War of 1812/Creek War with Andrew Jackson
3.1.1. Andrew Jackson Hutchings m. Mary Coffee [6.7.1]
3.2. Lemuel Hutchings m. [unknown] Owen
3.2.1. Alexander Hutchings
3.2.2. Arthur Hutchings
3.2.3. Stokely Donelson Hutchings
3.2.?. Two other daughters
3.3. Christopher Hutchings m. Louisa Ann Edwards; served in the War of 1812/Creek War with Andrew Jackson; seemingly settled in Huntsville, Alabama
3.3.1. Mary Hutchings m. John H. Cross, owned plantation in Poinsett County, Arkansas
3.3.2. Elizabeth Cooke Hutchings
3.3.3. John Hutchings, seemingly died young
3.3.4. Frank Hutchings
3.3.5. Jackson Hutchings
3.3.6. Fannie A. Hutchings
3.3.7. John Hutchings
3.3.8. Stockley D. Hutchings, known as S. D. Hutchings, he settled in Madison County, Alabama and was appointed postmaster of Huntsville, Alabama, which was at that time "a political appointment"; owned plantation in Holmes County, Mississippi
3.3.9. William E. Hutchings