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Collection: POLK PAPERS
10
Warrenton, North Carolina
Washington, D. C.
Columbia, Tennessee
1730-1897
Physical Description: £. 1300 items; letters, receipts, accounts, deeds and
grants, wills, speeches, military records, newspaper clippings, and mis¬
cellaneous material.
Acquisition: From Biennial Report, 1916-1918, a "large and as yet unclassi¬
fied and unarranged collection of the papers of the Polk family of which
President James K. Polk, Col,. William H. Polk, and Gen. Leonidas Polk were
members, which was presented by Tasker Polk, Warrenton, North Carolina";
192U-1926, addition, .one item.
Description: ^egg are the papers of Lucy williams Polk (1826-1906) and mem¬
bers of her immediate family. Mrs. Polk was the daughter of Joseph John
and Mary K. (Davis) Williams of Warren County. In 185b she married Major
William H. Polk (1815-1862) of Tennessee. From this union were born William
H. Polk [Jr. ] (1855-1886) and Tasker Polk (1861-1928), All items in the
"Polk Papers" belonged to one or more of the above individuals.
The more than nine hundred letters in this collection present an inter¬
esting portrait of Nineteenth Century life within the more affluent class
in the South. The Williamses were wealthy and influ mtial and their rela¬
tives included such well-known families as the Alstons, Davises, Greens,
Hilliards, Pughs, and Hawkqpses. Prior to 185b Lucy [Eugenia] Williams,
evidently beautiful, talented, and popular, traveled widely and enjoyed
the cream of social life in such places as Washington, Baltimore, and Nash¬
ville. Upon marrying William H. Polk,, she settled in Columbia, Tennessee,
where her congressman husband, the brother of President James K. Polk,
opposed secession and the Southern Confederacy until his death in 1862.
After the death of her husband, Lucy Polk returned to Warrenton where
she lived with her mother and attempted to educate her sons. Reconstruc¬
tion and post-reconstruction poverty are noticeably reflected in the cor¬
respondence of this period. For more than twenty years she strove unsuc¬
cessfully to gain some financial benefit from the estate of Major Polk.
Failing here, she attempted to use influence in legislative circles, to gain
government jobs in Washington for her sons. Concurrent with this effort,
Lucy entered a plea for a Mexican War Pension for herself as the widow of
a veteran of that war and a claim against the federal government for damage
done to her home in Columbia, Tennessee, by Union Troops who used it for
a headquarters during the Civil War.
The earliest correspondence goes back to the late Eighteenth Century
