1791 492 Acre Lease Catawba Indian Land to a Woman - York, SC

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1791 492 Acre Lease Catawba Indian Land to a Woman - York, SC:
$366.08

This is a small piece of paper measuring 7\" X 8\". We will transcribe as best we can:

Lease signed Gen\'l Newriver, Col. John Eairs?, Maj\'r John Brown & Capt. Peter to Elizabeth Daviss dated April 5th 1791 - Bounded as follows viz - Beginning at the bank of Steel Creek& running thence No. 67 E. 56 chains to a stake then so. 3 EL 16.50 to a post oak? Thence So. 18 toL 16..30 to a black oak thence so. 2 E.L 226 to a Black Oak thence So. 20 toL 19\" 30 to a black oak thence So. 3 pr 18L 23 C to a stake thence so. 43W L.C. to a Black Oak thence So. 33 W. 25 to a hickory thence No. 87.W. to a Stake thence with the said Steel Creek to the beginning.

A true Copy

E. Polk

492 Acres East side of Steel Creek joining Geo. Teller\'s line. back is docketed, \"1791 Apr. 5th 492 Acres Indian lease to Elizabeth Davis E. Polk\". We believe this docketing was done at a later date.

We believe E. Polk was Ezekiel Polk - President Polk\'s Grandfather who was a magistrate in Mecklenburg County during this period. Much more on Ezekiel (a very interesting fellow) below.

General New River was a Native American leader of the Catawba tribe. He was chief of the Catawba (1780 to 1801) following the death of King Prow during the American Revolutionary War. He was the son-in-law of King Haigler/Hagler or Nopkehee. He fought in several battles of the American Revolution starting with the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in 1781.

It was common during this period and before for Native Americans to give themselves titles such as the Englishmen. Therefore we believe that the other persons who were listed as offering the lease to Elizabeth were also Catawba Indians.

We could find no direct information about Elizabeth. If anyone can help, it would be greatly appreciate.

More information below. We absolutely guarantee authenticity of this rare document.

Ezekiel Polk (December 7, 1747 – August 31, 1824), American soldier, pioneer and grandfather of President James Knox Polk, was the next youngest of five boys and three girls born to William Polk and Margaret Taylor Polk of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, near present-day Carlisle. [ About 1753 the family moved southwestward to the southern boundary of North Carolina in what would become Mecklenburg County. His parents appear to have died shortly afterward, and Ezekiel probably was brought up by his older brother Thomas, the senior member of the family, a leader of the local militia and a member of the first and subsequent North Carolina provincial assemblies. [ At age 20 Ezekiel, recently married, was named clerk of court in the new county of Tryon across the Catawba River, where he and his bride established themselves on a 100-acre (0.40km 2) farm just south of Kings Mountain. In 1772, however, the provincial boundary was surveyed, and Polk\'s property was discovered to lie in South Carolina.

Polk adapted with increasing difficulty to the shifting boundary and consequent loss of his position as clerk of court. At first he was chosen lieutenant colonel of the district militia. In 1775 he was elected a delegate to the South Carolina Provincial Congress held in June and was commissioned a captain in the Third South Carolina Regiment of Horse Rangers, assigned to the interior, where Whigs and Loyalists were competing for control of the province. But when the regiment was ordered to the coast, Polk balked, marching his men home rather than sacrifice their health, as he put it, for the protection of Lowcountry aristocrats and rice plantation nabobs. He subsequently relented, apologized for his insubordination and was restored to command. He led his company against Loyalist forces in the battle at Reedy Riverin December 1775 and the following summer commanded 300 militia in a successful expedition against pro-Loyalist Cherokees. [ On July 24, 1776, Polk\'s regiment was adopted into the Continental Army and assigned to the Southern Department. \"Captain Ezekiel Polk\'s Independent Company,\" according to the U.S. Army\'s regimental history, was \"concurrently redesignated as the 10th Company, 3rd South Carolina Regiment.\"

Polk may never have been entirely comfortable in South Carolina, and waning popularity and political enmities appear have left him increasingly disgruntled. After being passed over initially as delegate to a provincial congress held in November 1775, he had with great difficulty forced a second election and kept his seat. Probably this aborted rejection continued to rankle. In late 1776 Polk surrendered his commission in the 3rd Regiment and returned to North Carolina, settling down on a 260-acre (1.1km 2) farm about 10 miles (16km) below Charlotte, the Mecklenburg County seat. Two years later he opened a tavern in town and the following year was named justice of the peace. This period of tranquility was not to last. With the fall of Charleston in 1780 and the subsequent defeat of Horatio Gates at Camden, Lord Charles Cornwallis\'striumphant Redcoatsmarched into North Carolina, the main body encamping a few miles from Polk\'s farm. The following day, September 26, Cornwallis commandeered the Charlotte home of Ezekiel\'s brother Thomas and established his headquarters there. Fearing the loss of crops, slaves and his tavern, Ezekiel rode to town and \"took protection\" from Cornwallis in exchange for peaceful cooperation with the British.

Such an action was not without precedent, and Polk\'s neighbors evidently did not judge him too harshly, for toward the end of the war the Mecklenburg magistrates, with only two dissenters, elected him sheriff. At the conclusion of the war, he received a generous acreage of western land for his services during the Revolution and in 1790 was appointed deputy surveyor in the Western District, as Tennessee was then called, and moved with his family to a tract north of the Cumberland River. Indian raids and the prolonged illness and death of his wife in 1791 led to his return to Mecklenburg County. He did not make Tennessee his permanent home until the fall of 1803, when he established himself on a 2,500-acre (10km 2) tract on the Duck River in what is now Maury County.

Polk was a militant Jeffersonian and a Deist (some said an atheist), which put him at loggerheads with much of the family, especially his nephew William Polk\'s three sons, who were Ezekiel\'s close Tennessee neighbors, ardent Federalists and orthodox churchmen. The inscription composed for his first wife\'s tombstone spoke of \"a glorious Resurrection to eternal life,\" but her painful illness and the death of all the children of his second marriage seem to have dampened if not extinguished the bereaved husband\'s faith.

He was married three times. His first wife, Mary Wilson Polk, bore him eight children, including Samuel, the father of James K. Polk, 11th President of the United States. No children of his second wife, Bessie Davis Polk, survived infancy. (Some sources identify his second wife as a Polly Campbell.) Genealogical Notes on Ezekiel Polk By his third wife, Sofia Neely Lennard Polk, he had four children. He died near Bolivar, Tennessee, August 31, 1824, and was buried in the Polk Cemetery at Bolivar.

Polk composed his own epitaph and left instructions that it be painted on durable wood \"as there is no rock in this country fit for grave stones.\" In its original version, it reads:

Here lies the dust of old E.P. One instance of mortality; Pennsylvania born, Car\'lina bred, In Tennessee died on his bed His youthful days he spent in pleasure, His latter days in gath\'ring treasure; From superstition liv\'d quite free And practiced strict morality. To holy cheats was never willing To give one solitary shilling, He can foresee, and in foreseeing He equals most of men in being That church and state will join their pow\'r And mis\'ry on this country show\'r. And Methodists with their camp bawling, Will be the cause of this down falling. An era not destined to see, It waits for poor posterity First fruits and tithes are odious things And so are Bishops, Priests and KingsPlease e-mail with any questions, at all. We would be happy to hear from you. Thank you for looking and for offerding. (j-2563)