The ancestry of President James K. Polk has been misunderstood for many years, and as we now know, incorrectly stated in older family histories. This was partly due to efforts by President Polk himself to better understand his family roots. His work led to some plausible but incorrect conclusions about his ancestry. His efforts and correspondence with some Polks of Somerset County, Maryland, ended with a well-known graphical family tree published in 1849 “by Act of Congress”! It showed the president’s North Carolina and Tennessee branch of the family as directly descended from the Polks of Somerset County.
A mistake in this family tree was discovered in 1908 and after much research but little new evidence, a revised but also incorrect version of the family history was published in the well-known book, Poke Family and Kinsman by William Harrison Polk in 1912. This valuable and voluminous work was widely accepted as the authentic family history for good reason, but unfortunately, with respect to the connection between the Polks of Somerset County, Maryland, and President Polk’s branch of North Carolina and Tennessee Polks, it was incorrect.
From original Somerset County colonial records in the Maryland State archives and subsequent confirmation by Y-chromosome DNA testing it is now certain that these two branches of the Polk family were in fact unrelated. The Maryland archival records and the DNA test results that confirm this are reviewed in this booklet.
As it turns out, there is an alternative explanation of President Polk’s ancestry that goes back to a different branch of the family from Cecil, not Somerset, County, Maryland. The evidence supporting this is strong and is presented in this work.
John F. Polk, Ph.D., of Havre de Grace, Maryland pursues family, Scotch-Irish and Maryland colonial history as a personal hobby. He currently serves as the Clan Historian for Clan Pollock International and publishes short articles on family history in the Clan Pollock newsletter. He is also a founder and project administrator for the Polk-Pollock-Pogue DNA Project which now has over 500 tested participants. The project has been very successful in resolving long unanswered family genealogical questions.
Dr. Polk is retired from a 45-year career as a research scientist and senior adviser for international research collaboration at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.
John F. Polk, PhD.
2025, 8.5" x 11", paper, , 20 pp.
ISBN: 9780788450914
101-P5091
