Memoirs of a Southern Woman "within the Lines," and a Genealogical Record

by Mary Polk Branch, Mrs. Mary Jones Polk Branch

1912

Mary Jones Polk was born in Tennessee, the daughter of Dr. William Julius Polk and Mary Rebecca Long Polk. Her parents were married at Mt. Gallant, in Halifax County, North Carolina, in 1814 or 1818. They moved to Columbia, Tennessee, in 1828 or 1834, making their home on a plantation near town. She married Col. Joseph Branch in 1859 at Columbia. He was a widower with two sons. They had four children. They lived on his plantation near Helena, Arkansas, until after the Civil War when they moved to the plantation she inherited from her father in Tennessee. She tells of life in the south, before, during, and immediately after the Civil War. Her husband was murdered when he returned to his plantation in Arkansas on business in 1867.