James Knox Polk (November 2, 1795 – June 15, 1849) was the 11th president of the United States, serving from 1845 to 1849. James Knox Polk was born on November 2, 1795, in a log cabin in Pineville, North Carolina. He was the first of 10 children born into a family of farmers. While Polk's mother remained a devout Presbyterian, his father, whose own father Ezekiel Polk was a deist, rejected dogmatic Presbyterianism. Jackson was a family friend to both the Polks and the Childresses—there is evidence Sarah Polk and her siblings called him 'Uncle Andrew'—and James Polk quickly came to support his presidential ambitions for 1824. When the Tennessee Legislature deadlocked on whom to elect as U.S. senator in 1823 (until 1913, legislators, not the people, elected senators), Jackson's name was placed in nomination. Polk broke from his usual allies, casting his vote as a member of the state House of Representatives for the general in Jackson's victory.
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