Antoinette Polk

Antoinette Van Leer Polk, Baroness de Charette (October 27, 1847 – February 3, 1919) was an American Southern belle in the Antebellum South and (by marriage) French aristocrat in the Gilded Age. She was born into the planter elite, the great-niece of the 11th President of the United States James K. Polk and a member of the influential Van Leer family through her mother. She was an heiress to plantations in Tennessee and a "Southern heroine" who warned Confederate soldiers of advancing Union troops during the American Civil War. After the war, she moved to Europe, where she took to foxhunting in the Roman Campagna of Italy and the English countryside, and later became a baroness and socialite in Paris and Brittany. Early life and family background Polk was born on October 27, 1847, in Nashville, Tennessee. Her father, Colonel Andrew Jackson Polk, was a planter who served in the Confederate States Army. Her mother, Rebecca Van Leer, was an heiress to an iron fortune from the Cumberland Furnace and the Van Leer family. Polk grew up at Ashwood Hall, a mansion in Ashwood near Columbia in Maury County, Tennessee with her parents and brother, Vanleer Polk. Her paternal great-uncle, James K. Polk served as the 11th President of the United States from 1845 to 1849. Bishop Leonidas Polk, who served as a General in the Confederate States Army, was her uncle. She was also a descendant of General Anthony Wayne and Samuel Van Leer, both officers in the American Revolutionary War. American Civil War and fox-hunting During the American Civil War, while visiting Mary Polk Branch she saw Northern forces on their way to Ashwood. Polk got on a horse and rode there before the Northerners to warn the Confederate soldiers of their arrival. As a result, she is credited as a "Southern heroine" for saving Confederate personnel. Unlike the Polks, her relatives on her mother's side fought for the Union.