JOHN WHITSETT AND SARAH THOMPSON, GRANDPARENTS OF FIRST LADY SARAH CHILDRESS POLK

|HOME| |Whitsett Home Page| |Whitsett History Menu| |Whitsett Family Group Sheets| |Photo Gallery| |Virtual Cemetery| |Genealogy Menu|

JOHN WHITSETT AND SARAH THOMPSON, GRANDPARENTS OF FIRST LADY SARAH POLK, NORTH CAROLINA, TENNESSEE, ALABAMA

John Whitsett, jr. appears prominently in the records of the early Quaker settlement of Wrightsboro, Georgia along with his father John and his in-laws, the family of Lawrence Thompson. The Quakers encouraged non-Quakers to come to their settlement with offers of free lots of about 200-250 acres. Many of the names we see later in Orange County, North Carolina took up the offer. The experiment was short-lived. Constant Indian raids made settlement and farming the land a dangerous proposition. Within a year many abandoned their land and returned to the relative safety of North Carolina. John, jr. and his wife Sarah Thompson Whitsett sold their lot of 200 acres before leaving Wrightsboro, eventually settling in what was then Orange County (now Guildford and Alamance Counties). Among the settlers who came to Orange Co. was the family of Lawrence Thompson, father of Sarah. The Whitsett and Thompson families later removed to Sumner County, Tennessee and their names appear together in several records of early Sumner County. The John Whitsett family was among those who prospered in North Carolina and Tennessee. John purchased the Revolutionary War Grant of 640 acres on Smith's Fork of the Caney Fork River in Tennessee. Today it is Smith Fork Creek in Smith County. This would have been a very large plantation even by the standards of the time. John and Sarah's daughter Elizabeth married into the wealthy and influential Childress family and her daughter, Sarah (named for her grandmother) was well schooled in all those things that made a gentile lady of the time. She married Nashville lawyer James Knox Polk, a man with political ambitions, fullfiled when he was elected the eleventh President Of The United States. In their old age, John and Sarah Whitsett were taken by their sons Lawrence and James to what was then Greene County (now Hale), Alabama where they died at the home of their son Lawrence. They are buried a mile or two below the present town of Havanna, Alabama on land that was once the Lawrence Whitsett plantation. Lawrence never married. When he died his estate was divided among his siblings and their children. These estate documents are the basis for the names of the children and descendants of John and Sarah Thompson Whitsett.

According to Sarah Childress Polk, widow of President James Knox Polk, Lawrence brought his aged parents, John and Sarah Whitsett to [Greene County], Alabama to care for them in their senior years. Lawrence Whitsett's estate documents provides us with many details of the make up of the family of John and Sarah (Thompson) Whitsett.

William Heth Whitsitt, ANNALS OF A SCOTCH-IRISH FAMILY, pg. 240-241; Letter from Mrs. Anson Nelson of Nashville to Dr. Whitsitt, Sept. 16, 1890 (Mrs. Nelson was a mutual friend of Sarah Childress Polk and Dr. Whitsitt who sent Mrs. Nelson a list of questions concerning Mrs. Polk's family. "Nashville, 146 North Summer Street, September 16, 1890; Mrs. Polk listened with lively interest to your letter, and took evident pleasure in talking of the family, seeming pleased to answer your inquiries. In those early times concerning which you are asking there was not so much appreciation of the relation of current events to history as there is now, and it was seldom that note was made of those events. This country was then a comparative wilderness, with little opportunity for recording occurrences or for keeping such records. Mrs. Polk does not know of any register of her ancestry, unless there may be a few names and dates in an old family Bible which was left to another branch of her mother's family and which she supposes is lost. She knows nothing of her ancestors in Scotland or Ireland or of any relatives living in those countries at the present time. The interesting items of tradition about the Whitsitt family in the seventeenth century, given in your letter, were entirely new to her. Mrs. Polk thinks that Mr. Jenkins, the historian, probably had access to sources of information unknown to her and that his statement is correct that her parents were married in Campbell County, Va. She has no record of the date of their marriage. The name of Elizabeth Whitsitt's father was 'John;' her mother's name was 'Sarah.' The family name is not remembered by Mrs. Polk. It was for her that the future Mrs. Polk was named 'Sarah.' Mrs. Polk's only sister was named for her father's mother, Susan Childress. John and Sarah Whitsitt lived in Sumner County, Tenn., and were plain country people, but were independent - owned their home, had slaves, and enjoyed the comforts of life. While Mrs. Polk was a child, they were carried to Alabama by their son, Lawrence Whitsitt, where they died at an advanced age. They had a son named 'James Whitsitt.' Mrs. Polk says there was no Episcopal Church in the place where her grandparents lived, and she thinks that they must have been Presbyterians, from the fact that her mother, Elizabeth Whitsitt Childress, was a devoted Presbyterian. She brought up her children strictly in the principles of that faith, although while living in the country in Rutherford County she could not be identified with the church. Elizabeth Whitsitt Childress had a sister, Mrs. Walton, much older than herself, living in Davidson or Sumner County - have claimed kin with Mrs. Polk, and she had a namesake, Sarah Polk Walton." [8]

1779 "The history of Sumner County actually begins about 1779 when a settlement of a dozen families was formed near Bledsoe's Lick. The winter of 1779-80 brought many new settlers. It continued to flow although there were many dangers and hardships which the people had to encounter. Many of these first-comers were killed by the Indians. Cisco, in his HISTORIC SUMNER COUNTY, TENNESSEE gives a list of those known to have lost their lives at the hands of savage Indians." Edythe Whitley [22]