When Andrew, junior, married in 1831 and brought his bride to the White House, President Jackson presented to his new daughter-in-law a young slave woman named Gracey to act as her personal maid. When the young couple came on to the Hermitage in the spring of 1832 Gracey came with them, and the young maid from Virginia soon attracted Alfred’s favorable attention. The master and mistress looked with favor on the match, and so they were married in the fall of 1837. Mrs. Jackson made a gala affair of the wedding, having the ceremony performed in the large central hall of the Hermitage and giving the couple a handsome wedding supper. The story of the fidelity of Alfred and Gracey to their white folk is the familiar idyl of the Old South—the faithful slaves’ devotion to their former masters in the time of the latter’s adversities. Gracey and Alfred had been with the Jacksons when they were in the White House, the first family of the land, they had enjoyed the flush days of the old General’s successes and popularity. And when the evil days came—when Alfred’s young master, now no longer young, cast off the burden of life and was laid to rest in the corner of the garden, and Gracey’s mistress faced life lonely and impoverished, with no farm left to work and no slaves left to work it—then Alfred and Gracey did not go off to set up homes of their own, in their new-found freedom, as did all of the other Hermitage black folks, but stayed there in their cabin to serve the mistress they loved as long as she lived. Gracey died in 1887, shortly before the death of Mrs. Sarah York Jackson; but Alfred lived until 1901, and played no small part in making the Hermitage a place of interest to visitors. As long as he was physically able he served as a guide, and those who came from afar to visit the Jackson shrine deemed it a rare privilege—as indeed it was—to be shown through the house and garden by one who had been there when the spark of his old master’s vibrant personality made the Hermitage a place alive with his presence. Alfred was fully conscious of the fact that he was a living connecting link between the departed great man and his living admirers, and he never tired of telling visitors stories illustrative of the greatness of the old General. To Uncle Alfred there was no flaw or blemish in his old master’s character or fame. His idolatrous veneration was well illustrated by his often quoted reply to a visitor who asked him if he thought General Jackson went to Heaven. “Co’se he went to Heaven,” Uncle Alfred answered with vigor, “if he want to. If he want to go dere, who gwine stop him?”