Antoinette Van Leer Polk

Antoinette Wayne Van Leer Polk was born on October 27, 1847 in Nashville, Tennessee.[1][2] Her father, Colonel Andrew Jackson Polk, was a planter who served in the Confederate States Army.[2][3] Her mother, Rebecca Van Leer, was an heiress to an iron fortune from Cumberland Furnace.[4] Polk grew up at Ashwood Hall, a mansion in Ashwood near Columbia in Maury County, Tennessee with her parents and brother, Vanleer Polk.[3]

Her paternal great-uncle, James K. Polk served as the 11th President of the United States from 1845 to 1849.[5] Bishop Leonidas Polk, who served as a General in the Confederate States Army, was her uncle.[6] She was also a descendant of William Penn, the founder of the state of Pennsylvania, and General Anthony Wayne, a General in the American Revolutionary War and Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army.[7]

During the American Civil War of 1861–1865, while visiting Mary Polk Branch, the wife of Confederate Colonel Lawrence O'Bryan Branch, she saw Northern forces on their way to Ashwood.[5] Polk got on a horse and rode there before the Northerners to warn the Confederate soldiers of their arrival.[5][6][8] As a result, she is credited as a "Southern heroine" for saving Confederate personnel.[5][8]

After the war, Polk moved to Italy with her mother and her siblings. Her family later became friends with King Humbert I.[9] [10] She took to fox-hunting in the Roman Campagna of Italy,[11] where she won a fox-hunt among forty female riders.[6][12] She also participated in fox hunting in the English countryside.[11]

In Italy, Polk met her future husband, General Baron Athanase-Charles-Marie Charette de la Contrie, then a Commander of the Papal Zouaves and grandson of Charles X the last king of France.[1][7][13] They wed in Rome, Italy, on December 1, 1877.[6][13] An aristocrat from the Vendée, he had served as a general in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.[14] They resided at the Avenue Hoche in the 8th arrondissement of Paris and at the Château de la Basse-Mothe in Bouguenais near Nantes.[14] Her wounded father lived with them,[3] until he died in Switzerland.[8] Polk inherited plantations in Tennessee from him.[10]

The couple had a son, Antoine de Charette, who was first engaged to Gladys Spencer-Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough,[10] and later married Susan Henning of Shelby County, Kentucky,[15][16][17] the daughter of James W. Henning, a stockbroker on the New York Stock Exchange,[18] in a lavish society wedding at the St. Patrick's Cathedral.[19]

Her miniature portrait was done by Katherine Arthur Behenna for New York art collector and socialite Peter Marié.[2] It was acquired by the New York Historical Society in 1905.[2][20]

She died on February 3, 1919 at her Château de la Basse-Mothe in Brittany, France.[1] Her son Antoine inherited her Southern plantations.[10][19] Her miniature portrait was exhibited alongside others as part of a special exhibition of the Peter Marié Collection showing socialites of the Gilded Age from November 11, 2011 to September 9, 2012 at the New York Historical Society in New York City.[20]