Adam
Cite this Page
"Adam," White House Workers History Project, White House Historical Association, 2026, https://whha.whirlihost.com/Detail/workers/201.
- Position
- Unclear from Context Unclear from Context
- Years in President's House
- circa 1831 – 1832
- Legal Status
- Enslaved Person
- Gender
- Male
- Race/Ethnicity
- Black or African American
- Presidency
- Andrew Jackson
- Biography
- In 1831, while living in the White House, President Andrew Jackson purchased an enslaved servant boy named Adam from Colonel John Gibbons Stuart of Virginia for $420.00. (1) In 1832, President Jackson sent a letter to his son Andrew Jackson Jr., then at the family plantation in Tennessee, and wrote, “When you come on [to DC] you will have to bring charles or Dick [enslaved workers] with you, as I will give you up Adam when you return.” Many presidents transported enslaved people to and from the White House andtheir home plantations. This may have been the case with Adam. (2)
Adam rotated back to the White House and then the Hermitage again at least one other time that we know of. On October 4, 1833 a letter from Andrew Jackson Jr. to Andrew Jackson states, “...Adam seem’s to improve a little–but his coughf [sic] is a dreadful one.” This letter was written as Andrew Jackson Jr. traveled back to The Hermitage and indicates that Adam was sick. Jackson wrote to Andrew Jackson Jr.’s wife, Sarah Yorke Jackson on October 6, 1833, “tell Adam to take care of getting cold, & the more he exercises the better–it will make him throw off the fleme.” (3) President Jackson continued to check in on Adam’s recovery through letters. However, Adam ultimately passed away sometime in the spring of 1834. His death was confirmed in a letter from Andrew Jackson to Andrew Jackson, Jr. on June 18, 1834, “I regret poor Adams death–he caught his complaint by his attention to our friend Mr. G Breathitt.” (4)
Thank you to The Hermitage providing research assistance with this biography. - (1) “Bank Book for December,” in The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume XI, 1831, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013), ed. Daniel Feller, et al., 717, https://trace.tennessee.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/68819eba-73e8-4b90-ab1e-949c05a1324f/content.
(2) “Letter from Andrew Jackson to Andrew Jackson Jr., December 8, 1832,” in The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume X, 1832, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2016), ed. Daniel Feller, et al., 677, https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=utk_jackson.
(3) “From Andrew Jackson Jr. to Andrew Jackson October 4, 1833,” in The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume XI, 1833, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2019), ed. Daniel Feller, Laura-Eve Moss, and Thomas Coens, et al., 718-719, https://trace.tennessee.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/ade34330-afd7-4a42-95de-13ea5cdd458f/content; “Andrew Jackson to Sarah Yorke Jackson, October 6, 1833,” in The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume XI, 1833, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2019), ed. Daniel Feller, Laura-Eve Moss, and Thomas Coens, 723-724, https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=utk_jackson.
(4) “Andrew Jackson to Andrew Jackson, Jr., June 18, 1834, in The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume XII, 1834 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2019), ed. Daniel Feller, Laura-Eve Moss, Thomas Coens, and Aaron Crawford, 306, https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=utk_jackson. - Birthplace
- Unclear from Context
- Related Workers
- CharlesTransportation, 1829 – circa 1837
- Dickcirca 1832
- Related Association Content
- https://www.whitehousehistory.org/slavery-in-the-andrew-jackson-white-house