Years afterwards General Jackson wrote to young Andrew Jackson Hutchings (letter of April 18, 1833, Bassett, _Correspondence of Andrew Jackson_, Vol. V): “Recollect the industry of your dear aunt, and with what economy she watched over what I made, and how we waded thro’ the vast expence of the mass of company we had. Nothing but her care and industry, with good economy could have saved me from ruin. If she had been extravagant the property would have vanished and poverty and want would have been our doom. Think of this before you attempt to select a wife.” The years in which this building was occupied were colorful and eventful ones in the Jackson saga. Unfortunately little is known of the actual details which attended its erection, the beginning of the garden, and other little intimate things concerning it. Even such a tireless student as the late John Spencer Bassett was not able to place exactly the time of its completion and occupation. Everything seems to indicate that it was started in 1818, about the close of General Jackson’s Florida campaign, and that it was ready for occupancy, most likely, prior to June, 1819, the date of President Monroe’s visit to Nashville and the Hermitage. The story is being pieced together, bit by bit, and it is gradually becoming complete. A letter from Sir John Jackson, mentioned by Bassett, but secured in full from the manuscripts of the New York Public Library, by the Tennessee State Library, shows that in 1819 the Jacksons had secured the services of an English gardener. This letter reads: “Philadelphia, April 30th, 1819. “Major Genl A Jackson “Dear General “On the 26th Inst I wrote a few lines to you by William Frost a regular bred english Gardener who has been well recommended and from what I can judge from conversation with him am in hopes he will be found capable of whatever he undertakes—I engaged him for you as Gardener without any stipulation as to terms merely holding out that on his own capacity and industry his success and welfare depended—like others of his situation of life required an advance to bear his expense and had to give him 30 dollars on your account. “I have seen a Nashville paper announcing your arrival and the congratulations of your Friends and fellow citizens testified by a Public dinner, it seems by the english Papers the english people are mad with the Citizens of N. York, this City and Baltimore for the respect shown you—with best respects to your Lady I remain with sincere respect and esteem, “Yours, “John Jackson.” In the same connection Bassett quotes a letter to William B. Lewis, which, though not dated, is placed sometime in 1819. It reads, in part: