Antoinette Polk

Antoinette Van Leer Polk de Charette, Baroness de La Contrie (October 27, 1847 – February 3, 1919) was an American Southern belle in the Antebellum South and (by marriage) French aristocrat in the Gilded Age. She was born into the planter elite, the great-niece of the 11th President of the United States James K. Polk and a member of the influential Van Leer family through her mother. She was an heiress to plantations in Tennessee and a "Southern heroine" who warned Confederate soldiers of advancing Union troops during the American Civil War. After the war, she moved to Europe, where she took to foxhunting in the Roman Campagna of Italy and the English countryside, and later became a baroness and socialite in Paris and Brittany.

Early life and family background Polk was born on October 27, 1847, in Nashville, Tennessee. Her father, Colonel Andrew Jackson Polk, was a planter who served in the Confederate States Army. Her mother, Rebecca Van Leer, was an heiress to an iron fortune from the Cumberland Furnace and the Van Leer family. Polk grew up at Ashwood Hall, a mansion in Ashwood near Columbia in Maury County, Tennessee with her parents and brother, Vanleer Polk. Bishop Leonidas Polk, who served as a General in the Confederate States Army, was her uncle. She was also a descendant of General Anthony Wayne and Samuel Van Leer, both officers in the American Revolutionary War.

American Civil War and fox-hunting During the American Civil War, while visiting Mary Polk Branch she saw Northern forces on their way to Ashwood. As a result, she is credited as a "Southern heroine" for saving Confederate personnel.

After the war, Polk moved to Italy with her mother and her siblings. Her family later became friends with King Humbert I. She took to fox-hunting in the Roman Campagna of Italy, where she won a fox-hunt among forty female riders. She also participated in fox hunting in the English countryside. They wed in Rome, Italy, on December 1, 1877. They resided at the Avenue Hoche in the 8th arrondissement of Paris and at the Château de la Basse-Mothe in Bouguenais near Nantes. and Charles Antoine, later known as Antoine de Charette, born in or near Paris in 1869, who was first engaged to Gladys Spencer-Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, the daughter of James W. Henning, a stockbroker on the New York Stock Exchange, in a lavish society wedding at the St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Her miniature portrait was done by Katherine Arthur Behenna for New York art collector and socialite Peter Marié.

Death and legacy She died on February 3, 1919, at her Château de la Basse-Mothe in Brittany, France. Her son Antoine inherited her Southern plantations. 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.