Early Polk Families of Obion County
Biography Copyright 1998, Dorothy Chance

29 October 2000:  Dorothy Chance and Anna Gilbert would like to invite anyone interested to participate in an exciting relationship they have just discovered through the Obion County web page.

Sometime between 1830 and 1833, John Polk brought his family from York County, SC, to Obion County, TN, settling in the area now known as Polk Station.

Not until the 1870 census do we find the names of all of the Polk family that lived in Polk Station.
James and William Polk, two younger sons of John Polk, remained in Obion County after the rest of the family had gone farther west.

In the 1870 census, the first to list all persons after the Civil War, the household of James Polk includes:  James, age 45-w, Elizabeth, age 26-w, Alexander, age 2-w, Charity, age 40-b, Joseph, age 21-b, Peter age 19-b and David, age 14-b.  Until emancipation, Charity, Joseph, Peter and David would have been slaves. Charity and James are both listed as having been born in South Carolina and must have come to Obion County as very small children and have grown up together, probably in the household of John Polk.

Anna Gilbert, collecting her family stories and researching family history, learned that Peter Polk was her grandmother’s father.  Peter’s mother was Charity and his father was James Polk.  Dorothy Chance is the granddaughter of James Polk’s brother, William.  Thus, Anna’s great grandfather Peter and Dorothy’s grandmother Mattie were first cousins.

We are very excited about this discovery.  A family once close, judging by the naming patterns followed on both sides of the family, is once more in contact.  We are eager to find more and want to ask anyone with connections to either side of this family to join in the search.
Our first objective is to identify the mother of Charity, if at all possible.

A baby did not come into the wilderness alone!

If anyone has any information on this please contact us.
Dorthy Chance – dchance2 (at) bellsouth.net    and   Anna Gilbert  – annagilbertg (at) aol.com

Early Polk Families of Obion County
Biography Copyright 1998, Dorothy Chance

Without doubt, people bearing the surname “Polk” contributed significantly to the early development of Obion County. There was a village named Polk Station and there are still Polk family descendants in the county. Who were these Polks? What are their relationships with one another? Where did they come from? Bearing a name thoroughly researched genealogically on account of having both a US President and a Bishop General, the Obion County Polk family connections remain mysterious.

Earliest Polk connected with Obion County

According to Goodspeed and others, the land upon which Troy was established was a gift of Col. William Polk of North Carolina. This William Polk was born in Mecklenburg Co., NC in 1758 and died there in 1834. There is a record that 5 men in Mecklenburg County, NC gathered at the land office, opened one night from midnight to 5 after midnight, and “purchased” the whole of West Tennessee “from the river to the river.” At that time the land belonged by treaty to the Choctaw nation. This “purchase” was divided into six parts, one for each “buyer” and one for the University of North Carolina. There is no indication that William Polk himself ever lived in Obion County, or even visited this piece of his vast holding in the western third of the State of Tennessee.

John Polk

Goodspeed refers to a John Polk who had “opened a farm” by 1833. A search of  The Polks of North Carolina and Tennessee  by Mrs. Frank Angelotti does not produce a John Polk that “fits” the dates, time and place of this John Polk. There is, on the other hand, an Obion County Court Record of May 14, 1834 showing that John Polk

“took the oath to become a citizen of the United States. He was born in the Kingdom of Ireland, a part of the dominion of the King of England. He came to this country when but a boy with his father who came to South Carolina and he believes that it was antecedent to the 29th of January, 1795. . . a resident of Obion County for three years…”

John Polk had three sons who were well known in the Troy community judging by court records and the Goodspeed accounts. They were George, who married Eliza Jane Marshall on 7-25-1837; Alexander who married Elizabeth Jackson 6-17-1829 and Thomas A. who was Sheriff of Obion County from 1836 to 1840. George Polk is listed in the 1840 census (10011-00001) and Thomas A. (00011-30001). There is no listing for John or Alexander. Curiously, neither John, George, Alexander nor Thomas A are listed as buried in Obion County. Given their obvious prominence, their passage and burials would surely have been noted if they had remained in the county. By 1850, none of them are listed in the census.

The Polk Brothers

Appearing for the first time in the 1850 census are two men sharing a household named James and William Polk. Both of these men later married neighboring daughters of T. J. Harper and it is from these families that the subsequent generations of Polks in the county descend. In that 1850 census, James is listed as 25 years of age, William as 24. While many of the Obion Polk descendants have assumed that James and William are younger sons of the earlier John Polk family, there may be another possibility. Another search of Angelotti does reveal brothers named James and William who could possibly be the two appearing in the 1850 Obion Co. census.

Sons of George Washington and Margaret Garman Polk, grandsons of Charles Polk and his second wife, Philopena Helms,  would have been nephews of the earlier mentioned William Polk and 1st cousins once removed of the 11th President of the United States. The only substantial hindrance to this “match” is the age of the two men. In their father’s application for their grandfather’s Revolutionary War Pension, James is listed as born in 1838, William in 1836, a 10 year difference between the two records. One might suppose that two young men, setting off into the “wilderness” on their own might well have wanted to present themselves as older than their actual years.

The wedding dates of the two (William in 1856 and James in 1867) lend some credence to their being younger than their professed age in the census. William, for example, would have been 50 at the time of his marriage, a marriage which produced 14 children! Two supportive circumstances favor this possibility: We can follow the families of William and James Polk very clearly in the ongoing records of Obion County. When, in 1870, for the first time, blacks were enumerated in the census, we find the following persons living either in the household of James Polk or in close proximity to both families, old enough to have come with the brothers from South Carolina to Obion Co. in the 1840’s, and bearing the surname Polk: Charity Polk, age 40; Isaac Polk, age 37; Isham Polk, age 50; Thomas Polk age 58; and Sarah A. Polk, age 32.

It could be imagined that a family sending two teenaged sons out to make their own ways might have sent along trusted slaves for their protection and care. As a descendant of William Polk, I grew up hearing extensive family lore centered around kinship to the President, with mention of the Bishop General (although to my recollection there was some hesitance over the denomination of that part of the family – Episcopalian rather than Presbyterian.) I recall no mention of the earlier John, of George, Alexander nor Thomas A. in the retelling of the family history. I certainly never heard mention of a grandfather who came directly from Ireland. The idea that there could have been two separate Polk families who lived in Obion County before 1850 is put forward here in hopes that additional information may be proffered that would clarify this genealogical mystery!

AnnaGilbertG (at) aol.com   to dchance (at) interserv.com
October 18, 2000

James Polk came to Obion County with a slave by the name of Charity. Charity and James Polk (?). had a son, Peter (b. 1854?, d. 1906) who is listed as a member of James Polk’s household in the 1870 census. Peter also had brothers: Newton (nickname: Plum), Washington (Geo), Joseph (Joe), Alexander, James, William (Billy).

Peter Polk married Mary and they had three children: Elizabeth (b. 1891, d. 1982), James Zellie, and Willie Franklin. (All born in Obion County) Elizabeth was  my grandmother. She often spoke of her father, uncles (noted above) and some cousins.

Her mom died when she was very young and very little is known about her. I now wonder if   Peter’s father was John – given the names of the uncles I grew up hearing about. However, he named his first son James. My grandmother was named for an aunt she never knew.  Her grandmother was Charity. Her grandfather was either James or John. She also had heard of a kinship to the President.

I have additional information concerning some of the Polk brothers mentioned. When did the father – John Polk die? I am interested in hearing from anyone who has any information that may shed more light on this. I also wonder if there are any other relatives to this particular family group.