Leonidas Polk Family Papers

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in view of which the energy displayed by him in facing constant physical hardships in his later ministry is manifestly heroic. Sent to England in the late summer of 1831, he visited France, Italy, and England and acquired those impressions of European universities which were to germinate and bear fruit twenty-five years later in the most magnificent educational project of his age. Returning to this country in the fall of 1832 with his health not fully restored, he decided to devote himself to farming and took up residence on a plantation assigned to him by his father in Tennessee.

The year of Polk's arrival in Tennessee was the year of the election of the Reverend James Hervey Otey as Bishop. Tennessee at this time was still pioneer territory for the Church, and Polk could not long remain indifferent to the urgent call for men to carry on the Church's ministry. In 1834 he agreed to take charge of St. Peter's Church, Columbia, without remuneration, and he was soon accompanying Bishop Otey on his episcopal visitations, preaching in Nashville, Knoxville, and Pulaski. At the Diocesan convention of 1835 he was