Ezekiel Polk

Ezekiel Franklin Polk (December 7, 1747 – August 31, 1824) was an American surveyor, soldier and pioneer. He was born to William and Margaret (Taylor) Polk, near Carlisle in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and was the youngest of eight children. The family moved to Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, around 1750. Ezekiel became a surveyor and a prosperous landowner. He would eventually marry three times, and raise 12 children to adulthood.

During the Revolutionary War Polk served in the state militia. He was a captain in the North Carolina militia, but after his property there was occupied by the British, he joined the South Carolina militia. After the British capture of Charleston, South Carolina, Polk became colonel of one of the three regiments that General Thomas Sumter raised in the back country to support Nathanael Greene's resistance.

This period of his life is very little known. After the active phase of the war, Polk's deist or perhaps even atheist beliefs brought him increasing conflicts with his neighbors. By 1790 he removed his immediate family to Tennessee, becoming one of the pioneers in the area that is now Hardeman County. His neighbors in the Carolinas removed the names of several people that they believed to be atheists from local records.

Having had one property burned by the British in the war, he used purchased land bounties from other veterans to build another successful property. His grandson James Knox Polk would become eleventh President of the United States.

Ezekiel died at home in Bolivar, Tennessee. Sometime before 1844 he was reinterred in the Hillside Cemetery (sometimes called the "Polk Cemetery") in Bolivar.