A good way. But to make sure that we have adequate time for everyone. So when you get to five minutes left, i have a fiveminute card and i will lay it up so you can see it and then three minutes and one minute so you can see where you are. So we have time for everyone. Im going to introduce each panelist as they come forward, because i found if you introduce them all at once people forget who they are. So i will begin with our first panelist who is john f. Polk. He received his ph. D. In mathematics from the the university of delaware in 1979. He served three years in the army, including a tour in vietnam. He is retired from a 45year career as a scientist and Senior Adviser of International Research collaboration at the u. S. Army research laboratory, aberdeen proving ground, maryland. He is currently the clan historian for clan pollock international and publishes short articles on Family History in the clan news letter. He has published two backs on historical topics, beyond damned quarter, the polk pluck family of chesapeake Eastern Shore in the colonial era. Published in 2015. Which received the sumner a. Parker prize from the maryland genealogile society and his second book somerset records, 1692 to 1696, abstracts with transcriptions for the archives of maryland, volume 535. And that was published in 2002. He also published an article in the journal of scotch irish history titled from lifford to the chesapeake, the advent of the scotch irish in america. And that was published in 2008. Dr. Polk initiated the polk pollock poeg dna project with the ftd and a and serves as volunteer administer. The title of his presentation is reexamining the ancestry of president james knox polk. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that introduction. Do i need to be near the microphone . Im back here its not good. Ill try to stay up nearby. Thank you very much for that introduction. And as you see the title of my talk is reexamining the ancestry of president james k. Polk. Right up front i will make i will say the main point i want to make in my talk is that the ancestry of the polk family that arrived from North Carolina in the 1750s is not what as it is stated in the popular polk Family History books. Im referring specifically to polk family and kinsman pukd in 19129 by William Harrison polk and polk family polks of North Carolina, tennessee by mrs. Frank c. Angel on thety. The two most popular on the polk family. With respect to the early ancestry i of the polk family they are incorrect. And i will i tra i to show you where they went astray. How i know theyre incorrect. And i will offer an alternative explanation of where they actually did come from. So if i can figure this out. The first thing i show here is the immediate line of the president. You see at the bottom james k. His father is samuel polk married jane knox. His greater was ezekiel polk colorful and wellknown fog, lots written about him and then his grandfather, william polk, a much more elusive figure, not a lot known about him. And he is will be the main focus of what i have to say right now where he came from. We dont know we way we know about him is that he married a lady by the name of margaret taylor. They lived initially in maryland. Then he moved to pennsylvania for a while and then down to North Carolina in the early 1750s. They had five sons. And three daughters. And nobody knows where they actually lived in North Carolina. He died and nobody knows where he is buried. Like i say he is not a wellknown figure. So what the and of course the president was the fourth generation of polks in North Carolina. And by the time by his time the family had lost track i think of their early history, and exactly where they had come from. And what they knew about it is expressed, i think, in the words of a colonel william polk of raleigh. Late in his life when he is in his 70s about 1830 he wrote a short auto biefrpgle sketch where he talked about himself. And he has this short statement in there about the origin of the family which you see up here on the view chart. And he says that william polk he is talking about himself a third person autobiography he says is a descendant of a family who emigrated from ireland about the year of 1722. And settled on the Eastern Shore of maryland where they zrid resided until about the year 1740 when they removed into the state of pennsylvania and into the neighborhood of carlisle. So this is probably what president polk would have known about his family as far as the early roots. Thats as far back as he would have known. He probably didnt have a particular interest in in early roots or his ancestry. He was far too busy running for office and pursuing his legal career. So but when he got to be elected president , and went on towashing 10 after being elected president , he didnt pay a lot of attention to these but the people that are important in this, i will mention specifically, there was a kernel William Wendell winder both of whom lived on the Eastern Shore of maryland who got in touch with the president and set my friend families from eastern maryland. You think we are related . And our family goes back to a fellow named robert paul who arrived in 1697. They had seven sons and the oldest son had a son named william. In 1708 they lived there for 15 more years and then they left. William polk son of john to parts unknown. They said this looks like it should be the right guy. And president paul polk says it makes sense to me. It must be the connection with maryland polks. He get together with with his family and they put together a family tree. Maybe some of you have seen this family tree. Theres a picture of it. This is my personal copy. It shows in the main part of the tree of course North Carolina and tennessee polks in the lower part is the maryland polks. Thats looking at it a little more closely. You can see here at the bottom robert the immigrant from ireland robert polk, and the next up is his son john. And then john going up to the middle of the tree, thats william polk, the connection between the tennessee and North Carolina polks. The greatgrandson of the president. His son ezequiel and samuels son up at the top left, up on the right is bishop polk, his second cousin and the two of them are the ones who put this tree together. And it was, by the way, its that an act of congress. If you look at the small print at the bottom of the tree says act of congress 1849 so you know its completely accurate. [ laughter ] this was widely except for everybody and became the why the accepted history from North Carolina all the way back to maryland. Robert polk actually came from so this was fine. In 1908 something happen. William harrison pulled polk was in the final throes of finishing his monumental work and got a letter from earl polk saying theres a problem. William polk left here in 1723. He only made it up into Dorchester County maryland, the next county north of somerset and that he died five years later. This is not william polk the greatgrandfather of the president clearly. So this caused a problem for William Harrison polk because he wanted to get the book out before he died even though he had been working on it for 45 years. Going back to the sons of robert tran two, there were son of them of rubber polk and they went back and said which one would be the right one. They didnt really have any new information so all they could do was speculate. In the end for whatever reason, William Harrison polk decided it must have been william ii son. He must have been the guy. Thats the way that he wrote the book. Thats a fact. Doesnt make any qualifications or caveats, just says thats the way it was and the way that Family History has come down the last couple of hundred years. His book and mrs. Book because she did not use what he put in his, and thats what comes down to the present day. The problem is it was just speculation with no fact behind it and worse, it was actually wrong. Thats what i want to mention now. I do want to mention we find places in the book where he makes these statements and even relates to another fellow called charles polk the indian trader and claimed he was another son of the same william of somerset and both turned out to be incorrect. How do we know that . One is the traditional way of paper trail, Genealogical Research and traditional colonial records. I spent many days in maryland state archives digging through every record they have to offer on the polk family. Somerset county was rich in their colonial records and you find lots of met references mentioning the family and specifically robert polk the immigrant and his sons. Nowhere in this record will you find anything to back up in that there was someone who may have ended up going to carolina or tennessee. Particularly i will mention the tax list. That was probably the best piece of evidence because every year they went around collecting the names of the taxables and those were people , and email over 16 years old so they have the names of people and everyones house including his. He had two sons by the names of james and david but none of williams or charles. Thats pretty conclusive i think based on pure colonial records. But since no one wants to accept something that has been believed for 100 years specifically connecting someone to a president of the United States you usually have to have more complete evidence. Its hard to prove a negative as we know. Myself and a longterm colleague of mine, bill polk of kansas city, hes an excellent genealogy research. We began a dna project about 10 years ago that i will go past the records. The dna of courses definitive. Weve had a successful project, 250 members who have contributed dna. And out of those 100 are surname males who contributed y chromosome dna. Of course that is what gets passed on from father to son without change so whatever he had would have been passed on to his descendents. What has come out of the results of the testing is that there are two Different Groups that emerged group im 223 and the greatgrandfather william belonged to a Different Group known as r r2 69. So they are genetically different and theres no possibility that william polk the greatgrandfather of the president could have been the sun or a defendant descendent of william polk. His great grandfather could not have been a descendent of robert polk of the Eastern Shore. That is shut down. So now the question is where did they actually come from . Thats the last part of this. I will finish in the questions period but anyway, it wasnt somerset but what we didnt know was that he came from the Eastern Shore of maryland so we had to look elsewhere. I found that if you go up a ways into cecil county maryland, they are at the very top part of the chesapeake bay, barely part of the Eastern Shore on the chesapeake bay. Cecil county, you see the new monster plantation patented in 1683 and then lived there for 25 years. About 1708 a group of scotch moved into the area. Last year in particular you see the whole cluster, a whole contingent of the Alexander Family who settled in 1708 and purchased the land in 1714. You can see the various parcels where they settled. Any of you who have spent time in Carolina History know how prominent the Alexander Family was. While all those people in North Carolina were the sons and grandsons of these alexanders in cecil county maryland. Col. William polk described how they moved to the carlisle area, pennsylvania, and into North Carolina. Thats the way he described his family and thats exactly what the Alexander Family did in the next generations. If you see that little yellow piece its a piece of land purchased by a man known as william in 1727. Col. William polk said his family arrived in 1722 so that fits pretty well. Of course is the original scottish form of the name polk. They are used rather interchangeably in colonial documents. Everyone spelled names very distantly so how long did he live there . One minute remaining . 1736 and he left. Probably be followed the same path as the alexanders. And who was his wife . The wifes name when the deed was signed as margaret. We know his wifes name was margaret taylor. You will find taylors living right here, one of them in a petition in 72. All the pieces come together to point to the fact that miss william is william polk who became the great grandfather of pres. Polk. I can tell you all the possible counties in maryland theres nothing else out there, no other possible candidate other than this one. As far as im concerned, its 100 . If you decide to agree with that, there is no, by the way, smoking gun documents of the polks in carolina saying we came from county. Or at least, ive never found one. To me until someone comes from a better theory, im sticking with this one so thank you for that. Ive written everything up in a lengthier paper which i think will end up in the proceedings of this conference. If they are not, i will certainly publish it in an appropriate journal. In the meantime, at the bottom you see my email address if you have questions. You can just get in contact with me at jfpolk comcast. Net. I guess thats it. Do we have questions . We will take questions from everybody at the end. My book, i have several copies of it here and i can copies of it here and i can part with my cost which is considerably better. Its called published four years ago and im happy to say it did get a prize with book of the year. It has all the answers of polks on the Eastern Shore and nothing was North Carolina and in tennessee. These are all people im not related to but i have so much information i decided it was worth putting together in the book so thank you. Our second presenter is lucas kelley, a phd candidate at the university of North Carolina chapel hill. He completed his undergraduate degree in history at Central College and his ma in history at virginia tech. He is the Maynard Adams fellow for Carolina PublicHumanity University of North Carolina. He has made numerous presentations at conferences in virginia louisiana North Carolina and the united kingdom. He currently has papers accepted for conferences at Carter University and for the annual meeting of the seven historical association. He has published two articles in the east journal of tennessee history, a divided state in a divided nation, east thats support of the union and the recession crisis in 1861 and the noblest enterprise of modern times, robert y hands 1936 address to the Knoxville Convention which was published in 2016. He also published an article called ardent nola fire and a gradual emancipator, the paradox of virginia gov. John floyd published in 2016. If this seems familiar you may remember that he was a student assistant in the fall of 2014. Thank you so much for the introduction. Im really happy to be here. On a rainy march 4, inauguration day, james k polk stood on the capital and addressed the nation. Pres. John tyler signed a congressional resolution three days before to annex texas in an enormous victory for democrats who have been casting their eyes on texas since before the presidency. He not only cheered it annexation but used it to articulate his expansionist vision for the nation. As the population has expanded the union has been strengthened. As boundaries have been enlarged and agricultural population has been spread over a large surface, our system has acquired additional strength and security. As it shall be extended, the bonds of our union so far from being weekend session from being weekend will become stronger. The connection between polk and american expansion has not gone unnoticed by scholars of American History. An ardent expansionist and a fervent annexationist, only a few ways that historians have described him coming hes the president most often associated by manifest destiny, that the United States possessed a divine right to the north american historians frequently cite the election and administrative policies as a the three for advocates of manifest destiny while recognizing disastrous consequences in the 1840s, and how the expansion contributed to the growing sectional crisis of the 1850s. This perspective often overlooks the familiarity with and benefit from prior american expansion. Born in North Carolina in 1795 he moved with his family in the final month to his grandfathers land of Williamson County soon to be reorganized. Over the course of the next two decades they would become one of the most politically influential and wealthiest slaveholding families. Yet, as much as social prominence depended on this, it was only possible through the tennessee indigenous people. Family members speculated heavily in what would become middle and west tennessee. Several relatives acted as agents after the territory had been opened. They collected rent, surveyed land and sold tracks to prospective buyers. A complete understanding of the legacy not only requires a focus on executive office but also recognition of how the family acquired lan