It is fitting that this letter should be published for the first time in a volume on the Hermitage, for it is an interesting contribution to the incomplete records of Andrew Jackson’s early career in Tennessee. It is not strange, of course, that these records should be scant. Jackson was too young, too busy, and too completely unaware of the greatness which awaited him to have an interest in preserving personal records of this early period. Certainly his acquaintances could not have seen in the tall, slender, red-haired young attorney a future president and a great general. Many disconnected court records may be found. A few of his account books survive and some of his letters have escaped oblivion; but, for the most part, the records of his early military activities, his mercantile business, and his land deals are incomplete. It is impossible to quote in detail from the court records of his land deals—that would require a separate volume. It is possible to show from them, however, that when he owned both the Hunter’s Hill and Hermitage tracts, his holdings in the Hermitage neighborhood totaled something like 1,200 acres. The extent of his land fluctuated from time to time with his changing fortunes. For instance he sold the Hunter’s Hill tract in 1804, bought it back at a later period of prosperity, and sold it again under financial pressure. At his death he held a plantation in Mississippi, as well as his Hermitage estate and adjoining lands bought from the heirs of Savern Donelson. The Hermitage estate, as described by Andrew Jackson himself on September 30, 1841 (Bassett, Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, Vol. VI, p. 125) was as follows: