Jefferson J. Polk, an eccentric clergyman, physician, and writer, was
born near Georgetown, Kentucky, March 10, 1802. He spent his young
manhood as a printer on the _Georgetown Patriot_, and the _Kentucky
Gazette_. In 1822 Polk joined the Lexington Temperance Society, and he
continued steadfast in the cause until his death. He subsequently
united with the Methodist church of Lexington, and married; but he
continued to work as a journeyman-printer until 1826, when he removed
to Danville, Kentucky, where he purchased and became editor of _The
Olive Branch_, a weekly newspaper. This he conducted for several
years, when he disposed of it in order to become an agent for the
American Colonization Society. Polk held that emancipation with
colonization in Liberia or elsewhere was the only proper and just
solution of the slavery question. The awful Asiatic cholera reached
Danville in 1833--as it did nearly a dozen other Kentucky towns--and
Polk played his part in the battle which was waged against it. A short
time later he became a Methodist circuit-rider, but, in 1839, he went
to Lexington to study medicine at Transylvania Medical School. In the
following year Dr. Polk removed to Perryville, Kentucky, some miles
from Danville, and this was his future home. Here he practiced
medicine and preached the Gospel for the next twenty years. In 1860 he
supported John Bell of Tennessee for president, but, when Lincoln was
elected, he became a strong Union man. The battle of Perryville
(October 8, 1862), the greatest battle ever fought upon Kentucky soil,
was waged before the good doctor's very door. He converted his house
into a hospital, and himself acted as surgeon of a field hospital.
After the war he was postmaster of Perryville and claim agent for
Union soldiers. At the age of sixty-five years, this eccentric old man
published one of the literary curiosities of Kentucky literature, yet
withal a work of real interest and much first-hand information. The
little volume was entitled _Autobiography of Dr. J. J. Polk, to which
is added his occasional writings and biographies of worthy men and
women of Boyle County, Kentucky_ (Louisville, 1867). From the
frontispiece portrait the author looks fiercely out at the reader, a
real son of thunder. Besides the autobiography of Dr. Polk the volume
contains sketches of men, women, and places, fables, proverbs,
sermons, woman's rights, a ghost story, "love powders," reflections of
an old man, biographies of a group of the doctor's parishioners--all
crowded into the 254 pages of this book. Dr. Polk died at Perryville,
Kentucky, May 23, 1881.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. The chief authority for the facts of Dr. Polk's life
is, of course, his _Autobiography_; _History of Kentucky_, by R.
H. Collins (Covington, Kentucky, 1882).