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S C Connor et al –
Since I have been mentioned several times in recent discussions let me offer my perspective on some of the points raised.
First, as concerns my article published in the Clan Pollock Newsletter, the Pollag - it was a summary of the conclusions I have come to based on my research into our first settlers, Robert and Magdalen Polk, principally from the records in Maryland State Archives (MSA). As stated in the article I hope to publish a book about the Polks & Pollocks in the colonial Chesapeake region which will provide a full discussion and the necessary documentation about this. The article itself was just a two page summary of my findings and does not cite the sources or go into detail so it cannot be regarded as an actual refutation of previously held understandings of our family history where it disagrees with them. Here is what it says regarding the parentage of William and Charles Polk, the supposed sons of Robert and Magdalen’s son William:
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- There is no evidence in Maryland records that William Polk, son of R&M, had sons named William or Charles; the evidence is very much to the contrary. William did have two sons, James and David, and two daughters Jane and Mary, all of whom are very well documented in Somerset records. (In “Polk Family and Kinsmen”, W. H. Polk states that William Polk, progenitor of the North Carolina Polks, and his purported brother, Charles Polke, the Indian Trader, were sons of William Polk, son of R&M. From W.H. Polk’s private correspondence now archived in the University of Kentucky Library, it is clear this was simply speculation.)
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I did not say anything in the article about an alternative possibility of William Polk “of Carlisle”, who married Margaret Taylor, and Charles Polk (the “Indian Trader”) being descended from Robert and Magdalen via a different son. (I will use William Polk/MT and Charles Polke/IT below to indicate these two.) However I will say here that I side with Bill Polk in his skepticism of the possibility that William, or some other son, James, might have been sons of Robert Polk, Jr. I have read the rationale on this point in your (S. C. Connor) message provided to this forum last June. Before commenting on it let me first say that I appreciate the depth of information that you bring to the discussion and am very happy to have the dialogue proceed on such a scholarly level. There are a lot of myths in our Polk/Pollock family history which need to be seriously re-examined and reconsidered, and this is how it needs to be done. The basic sources – Mrs. Angellotti, W.H. Polk and Aurelia Winder Townsend - which have long been the standard references used in Polk family genealogy unfortunately contain a lot of mistakes that have been accepted without question and produced many mistaken lineages. I think we owe these folks a debt of gratitude for what they did in their time but have to recognize their limitations. Research is a lot easier and sources more accessible today than they were when the earlier works were written so it is up to us to bring a higher level of scholarship to the effort.
Anyway, with respect to the suggestion of Robert Polk, Jr. being the father of William Polk/MT, progenitor of the Polks of NC and TN, let me offer the following points:
The conjecture rests entirely on the possibility of Robert Polk, Jr. having a son William, he being the William Polk who signed as a witness of Robert’s will. There is no other basis for thinking that Robert had such a son. It has always been my supposition that this witness, William, was actually Robert’s nephew William, son of Robert and Magdalen’s oldest son John. This William also lived in Dorchester on the west side of the Nanticoke not far from Robert, Jr. and seems a much more plausible candidate to have been the witness. At least we know he was a real person. The fact that he did not appear in court to prove the will is explained simply by his death in the interim. His own will was probated in Dorchester on 21 Feb 1726/7, three months before Robert Jr.s’ will was proved - 10 May 1727. There is really no need to postulate a new son of Robert Jr. for which there is no other record. As you know, there was no such son mentioned as a legatee in Robert Jr.’s will; the only sons cited are Thomas and Robert, III. The suggestion that Robert, Jr. had already given another hypothetical son a life inheritance, and did not need to provide for him, is exactly what W. H. Polk suggested as a reason for the omission of a William and Charles Polk from the will of William Polk of Somerset (Polk Family and Kinsmen (PF&K), p.205), and is just as arbitrary. It also ignores the common practice of leaving such legatees a token bequest, such as one shilling, to forestall any claim that they might bring to challenge the will. Hypothesizing the existence of some otherwise unknown son rather than attributing the signature to a known and nearby nephew just doesn’t satisfy Occam’s razor.
There is also the issue of how likely it was for the son of a basic planter living a pretty hardscrabble life clearing land in the Dorchester backwoods to become a cordwainer (craftsman of fine boots, as you put it) as William Polk\MT was characterized in Cecil County land records.
As far as comparing signatures from the will against signatures of William/MT in other possible documents, I am afraid Robert Jr.’s original will doesn’t exist. Some original Maryland wills, such as that of Magdalen Tasker Polk, have survived and can be found at MSA, but not his. I have checked. I have also never been able to find a signature by William Polk/MT anywhere, MD, PA or NC. I do have one for Charles Polke/IT.
As mentioned in the short clip from my article, I have been to the University of Kentucky library where all of W. H. Polk’s papers are archived, and read through them. The documents most relevant to the parentage of William of Carlisle and Charles Polke the Indian Trader are in his correspondence with his long time colleague R. C. Ballard Thruston of Louisville, a descendant of Charles Polke. For almost the entire four or five decades that W. H. Polk was compiling family history for PF&K the understanding was always that William Polk of Carlisle was the son of John Polk, son of R&M, as the family tree of 1848 showed it (which, by the way, was actually published by Act of Congress for what that is worth). W. H. Polk also had his own hand-written graphical family tree which you will find in the papers – dated 1910 – that has this same error. This lineage had to be discarded when the Dorchester will of William Polk, son of John, was discovered and clearly proved that he didn’t relocate to Pennsylvania and become the patriarch of the NC&TN Polks. There is much discussion and conjecturing in the subsequent correspondence between W H. Polk and R. C. B. Thruston about the other possible parents of William Polk/MT, principally focusing on Robert and Magdalen’s sons William, Joseph and David. I don’t remember if Robert Jr. was considered as a serious alternative. The possibility of William Polk/MT coming from some family line other than Robert and Magdalen's never seems to have been considered.
The discussion was of course all speculation. They had no evidence to confirm anything. Ballard Thruston was very definite in his advice to W. H. Polk that he should just lay out what they knew, with the possible suggestion of William (“Sr.”) as the most likely candidate as the father of William Polk/MT. Here is a quote from Thruston’s letter of 10 December 1910:
"Yours of the 9th inst. reached me this morning. I think your conclusions are right. I think the chances of William, who married Margaret Taylor, and Charles of Frederick being descendants of Joseph are very, very, slim. The chance of their being children of David is of course a live issue, which has not yet been solved. In my mind they are more likely to have been sons of the first William as you place them. However, if I were in your place, in a book, I would call attention to the fact that you have no direct proof of their being sons of William and then go on to give your reasons for placing them there in the tree."
In an earlier letter (7 December) Thruston makes the following comment about his ancestor:
"I have never been able to locate Charles Polke of Frederick County [the Indian Trader] . I think you have to enter him & his line as an untraced branch. I think it very probable that he and the William who married Margaret Taylor were brothers, children of William Polk, son of Robert and Magdalen, by his first wife, but I would certainly not publish that as a settled fact. We may stumble across the information some day, and I sincerely hope we will."
Déjà vu? Folks, we are travelling in their footsteps. We use the internet, they did it by mail, but the questions are the same a century later.
Very unfortunately W. H. Polk, who was a newspaper editor and generally strikes me as an honest scholar just trying to gather the facts, chose to ignore Thruston’s advice and make the assertions that he did about William and Charles being the sons of William Polk of Somerset “as the proof adduced indicates” (PF&K, p.355). Mrs. Angellotti accepted this view as authoritative, repeated in “Polks of North Carolina and Tennessee” and we have been living with it ever since.
I have my own alternative theory on William Polk/MT’s origin and will provide in separate message, but enough for now.
John Polk
Havre de Grace MD
PS - I welcome all of you to join Clan Pollock if not already a member. The Clan website is at http://www.clanpollock.com/ Annual dues are $15. I serve as the Clan Historian and frequently contribute a column to the quarterly newsletter.
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