James K. Polk State Historic Site Analysis

The President James K. Polk State Historic Site is located in Pineville, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. The site is situated in a small clearing in a forest surrounded by the suburban town (Pineville) just outside of Charlotte. The size of the current land is 21 acres out of the original 150 acres of the Polk family’s property. On the land is an information center, a log house, a separate kitchen house, a barn, a garden, and a forest that surrounds the area. The original memorial site was founded in 1904, only consisting a stone marker. Fifty years later, the site was turned into a State Historic Site and a log house was reconstructed in 1966. A trail and an information center was built nearby to accompany the log houses. The information

A unique feature of the houses in the 19th century is that some houses have a separate building for a kitchen. The tour guide Kate Moore informed us, “Most wealthy families had a separate building for a kitchen. The kitchen would get hot from the heat while cooking, and fires were common.” She also said, “Most of the time, house slaves would work all day and sleep in the kitchen house. Mrs. Polk, James’ mother, came from a wealthy family and owned two slaves who worked and slept in the kitchen.” Both the log houses and the kitchen house is made of wood, plastic, and bricks. The original house of Polk’s family was made of wood, red clay, and bricks. Red clay was packed between wood planks and used to help insulate the house during the winter and to keep it cool during the

Small farms populated the region and mainly grew wheat, corn, oats, and hay. The labor was arduous and only half of the white population owned slaves. There were some factories, mills, and artisan work in the region but was not as prominent as the farms. Formal education was mainly limited to boys who attended academies or private home schools across the county that provided primary education. Most of them were connected to a church, many of them being Presbyterians who originally settled in the New World for religious freedom. The rural society began to disappear and was being replaced with urban societies throughout the years between 1820 and 1850, especially after the Mexican-American War. America’s expansion history played an influential role in displacing Mecklenburg’s rural society with a new urban one. Access to transportation, communication, expanding industry, and an aggressive America created a rapid social and economic change in the Mecklenburg area. This can be seen by comparing the historic site with Charlotte. Most farming societies did not turn into cities like Charlotte, giving the place a unique