Leonidas Polk Family Papers

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500,000 square miles, an area bigger than that part of the United States north of the Ohio River and the Mason and Dixon line east of the Mississippi River. Nor is it comprehended by the realization that in this area lived 1,500,000 people. Rather, the stupendousness of the work lay in the fact that the population as scattered over this wide area and that the people could only be reached by slow and difficult means of travel -- by steamboat and canoe or by fording swollen rivers, by horse-back, by springless open wagon, or even on foot. Yet, to the small communities and lonely dwellings where the children of the Church were found, Leonidas Polk went, 'gathering congregations, holding services, preaching, baptizing, confirming and celebrating the sacrament wherever and whenever he could find an opportunity,' as his son has written. His three missionary journeys can be likened to those of St. Paul." During the first eighteen months of his episcopate he spent only four with his family.

Bishop Polk's missionary jurisdiction included Arkansas, the Indian Territory, Mississippi,

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Alabama, Louisiana, and what was then the Republic of Texas. Responsibility for the last-mentioned of these territories made Leonidas Polk the first foreign Missionary Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

In the course of his first missionary journey, in March, 1839, the Bishop crossed the Red River, passed over into the disputed territory between Texas and the United States, visited pplanters, and then embarked by boat for Shreveport, Louisiana. Accommodations for passengers were lacking, but a fur trader loaned him a bear rug to sleep on. Every day this trader took an observation of the sun to be sure of the hour of the day and then read his Bible to be sure that he was reading it at the same hour as his wife at home. On the trip down the river the ship struck a partially submerged snag and should have had not the Bishop suggested to the ship's captain how to raise it. Then the fur trader and the Bishop, embarking on another ship while the other waited for repairs, proceeded to their destination. At Shreveport