Polk Administration - Early Life
Early Life
Of Scotch-Irish ancestry, the first Polks arrived in the United States late in the seventeenth century and became farmers on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Here they organized the earliest Presbyterian congregation in the New World. Over the years the Polk clan migrated westward, settling in significant numbers by the end of the eighteenth century in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. It was in this rural community that James Knox Polk, named after his maternal grandfather, was born on November 2, 1795.
The eldest of 10 children born to Jane Knox and Samuel Polk, James Polk's early life was shaped by the religious convictions of his mother, the rigors of a frontier upbringing, and his poor health. Jane Knox was a devout Presbyterian who instilled in her son the values of duty, self-reliance, and personal achievement, characteristics that contributed to Polk's later reputation as one of the hardest working men ever to...
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