Jackson was intensely interested in the annexation of Texas, and when that was finally accomplished and Houston was elected as the new state’s first Senator, Old Hickory looked forward with the keenest delight to the visit which Houston was planning to pay him on his way from Texas to Washington. But when the Texas hero reached Nashville he learned to his dismay that the old statesman, long in precarious health, was that day literally on his death bed; and although he hastened to the Hermitage with all speed, he was just a few minutes too late to give a farewell clasp of the hand to his old friend. Just before reaching the house he met the carriage of Doctor Esselman on his way back to Nashville, and the doctor conveyed to him the sad intelligence of the General’s death; so Houston, instead of going on to the Hermitage, stopped by at Tulip Grove, but after the funeral he stayed over at the Hermitage for a brief visit with the family. In her reminiscences Mrs. Rachel Jackson Lawrence recalls this visit and how to her childish mind the sober black clothing he then wore contrasted so strongly with the brilliant military uniform in which he was arrayed when he had visited the Hermitage a few years before, soon after his history making victory over Santa Anna at San Jacinto. Mrs. Lawrence also told of a visit Houston paid to the Hermitage in 1836, when the work of rebuilding the house had not quite been completed. At that time the flagstones of the front portico had not yet been laid, and General Houston to the great amusement of the children got down in the sand and loose dirt and played “Doodle bug, doodle bug, come out of your hole.” There was no pose of false dignity about Sam Houston—maybe that was why so many people loved him. The earliest distinguished visitor to the Hermitage—and the one whose visit had the most far-reaching implications—was Aaron Burr, the spectacular figure of the early nineteenth century whose strange adventures almost embroiled General Jackson in serious trouble.