“Compiled by Susan Leigh Blackford, from original and contemporaneous memoirs, correspondence and diaries. Annotated by her husband, Charles Minor Blackford. Edited and abridged for publication by Charles Minor Blackford.”
Mary Jones Polk was born in Tennessee, the daughter of Dr. William Julius Polk and Mary Rebecca Long Polk. Her parents were married at Mt. Gallant, in Halifax County, North Carolina, in 1814 or 1818. They moved to Columbia, Tennessee, in 1828 or…