Now back in play with a new container. No more cryptex.
You have to drive through South Carolina to get here, but this cache site is actually in North Carolina and some say the 7th President of the United States was born right here.
Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767 in the Waxhaw area of the Carolinas. The Waxhaw settlement is very close to the North Carolina ~ South Carolina border and the area was so remote that the state lines had not yet been surveyed. To this day both NC and SC have historic markers claiming to be his birthplace.
After a sporadic education, at the age of 13, he joined the Army to fight in the Revolutionary War. He was a courier and was captured by the British, but soon released after he refused to shine his captors’ boots. His mother and two brothers were killed in the war and he was raised by his uncle.
In his late teens he studied law in Salisbury, NC and became an outstanding young lawyer in Tennessee. Fiercely guarded of his honor, he engaged in brawls and once killed a man in a dual because the man cast an unjustified slur on his wife Rachel. In fact he engaged in many duels with pistols and carried two bullets in him until his death in 1845.
Jackson served Tennessee as the first person elected to the US House of Representatives and also as a Senator from that newly formed state. He was promoted to Major General in the war of 1812. In 1822 he won another Senate seat and lost a presidential bid in 1824…even though he'd won the popular vote. Finally in 1828 Jackson won the presidential election by a landslide and threw a party Washington would never forget.
After his inauguration on March 4th 1829, Jackson was the first president to invite the public to attend the after party or "open house" at the White House, which quickly earned him popularity. The crowd that arrived was so large that furniture and dishes were broken and the crowd had to be lured outside on the lawn with spiked punch. The crowd was estimated to be in excess of 20,000.
He won his second presidential election in 1832 by winning 56 percent of the popular vote. While Jackson was president, he had running water and indoor bathrooms installed in the White House and, in 1835, Jackson was the first and only president to pay off the national debt.
His picture is currently on the $20 bill, but over the past two centuries it's also been on the $5, $10, $50 and $10,000 bills in addition to the Confederate $1,000 bill.
Whether he was born in North Carolina or South Carolina is still unknown, but Andrew Jackson is still a son of Waxhaw.
Waxhaw is full of history and is a wonderful place to explore, so take time to visit Waxhaw while you're in the area.