East Cabin The Hermitage - Andrew Jackson House, Nashville Tennessee

Between 1804 and 1821, Andrew Jackson and his wife Rachel lived in the First Hermitage, in a structure now known as the West Cabin. The East Cabin is also part of the First Hermitage; it served as the kitchen building. While Jackson and his family occupied the cabins of the First Hermitage, he took an active role in Tennessee politics. Jackson made an impact on a statewide level through his decisions as a judge and on the national stage as a military leader. After the Jackson family moved into The Hermitage Mansion, built between 1819 and 1821, the cabin continued in use as slave quarters on his plantation.

Between 1804 and 1821, the East Cabin most likely was used a service building on the Jackson plantation. During the archaeological excavations of 1980, archaeologists led by Jane Henshaw discovered an early pier about twenty feet north of the current southeast comer and another at the midpoint, one stone south of the present location; to the north and south ends, they found borrow pits. The pits were dug to get the clay needed for mortar and chinking; in them, the archaeologists found limestone chips discarded during the chimneys' construction. The borrow pit on the north end was filled with ash, while that on the south was not. The presence of ash suggests that the north chimney stack was rebuilt after a fire. Archaeologists propose that the chimney on the north side was made of wattle and daub like those originally heating the field quarter buildings. The clay and stick chimney was replaced by one made of stone after Jackson was established on the property.

During this time, the Jacksons used the East Cabin as their kitchen, however, the cabin is a double pen structure. Its architectural arrangement suggests that the cabin was home to more activities than just those of the kitchen. While it is possible that both pens were part of a large kitchen complex, it is more likely that one pen was the kitchen and the other operated as a laundry, loom house, or housing for the cook's family. More evidence is needed to determine how the cabin was used and if those functions dictated any structural changes between 1804 and 1821.

After the Jackson family moved into The Hermitage Mansion, the First Hermitage became slave quarters. While no date for this change in occupation has been identified, it was probably put to reuse once the new buildings were occupied in 1821.

Between the 1820s and 1850, the cabin was part of a quarter that housed five slave families. In the 1850s, the Jackson family relocated a portion of its workforce to plantations in the Mississippi River valley below Memphis and in 1856 sold The Hermitage to the state of Tennessee. It is unknown how this change in ownership affected the occupation of the East Cabin.