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brother night and day, instructed him in the faith, bap-
tized him and, when the end came, read the burial serv-
ice over his grave. Polk's own health continued so poor
that in April, 1831, he felt compelled to resign his
post in Richmond. He attended the diocesan conven-
tion at Norfolk in May, however, and was ordained
priest. Then, on the insistence of his doctors he went
on a leisurely trip to Europe and England, where, his
diaries and letters reveal, he devoted himself to a con-
siderable amount of theological reflection and active
study of the religious habits and institutions of the
countries visited. He returned home in 1832, at the
age of twenty-six, greatly improved in spirits and ap-
pearance and free of all signs of the threatened con-
sumption that had caused one doctor to assure him in
1831 that he had only a few months to live.

In April, 1833, Polk and his wife went to Maury
County, Tennessee, and settled on part of a tract of
five thousand acres given to Leonidas and his three
surviving brothers by their father. Living at first in a
four-room log house, he soon had a larger house built,
land cleared, and a mill and other building erected.
Thus supporting himself by farming, he continued his
work as priest, instructing and holding services regu-
larly for his own Negroes and for other whites and
Negroes in the neighborhood.

Eventually a "neat brick church of simple Gothic
architecture, " St. Johns, Ashwood, was erected on land
given by Polk. Whites and Negroes worshiped there
together, as was the custom in the antebellum South.
A visitor from Philadelphia, observing the Polks' con-
cern for the Negroes of the community, commented,
"Thus does the enlarged benevolence of these men em-

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