Sarah Polk Fall

Sarah Polk Jetton Fall (Although she was born with the name "Sarah" she mostly went by Sallie.) The Library of Congress uses the alternate spelling "Sally". Mary Childress was the daughter of Anderson Childress, the older brother of First Lady Sarah Childress Polk.

Sallie's mother died a few months after her birth from childbirth complications. Her father was unable to raise her alone, so she was taken in by her great-grandmother Elizabeth Childress. She stayed with her great-grandmother for a short period until the death of President James K. Polk in 1849. The president's wife Sarah mourned her husband's death deeply and became a recluse, rarely leaving her home Polk Place. Elizabeth, who was in her 70s, brought Sallie to Polk Place and suggested Sarah should care for her. Sarah agreed and assumed guardianship of Sallie after 1850.

Many who knew Sarah seemed skeptical of her bringing a child into her home. Judge John Catron would make the comment, "You are not the one Madam, to have charge of a little child; you, who have always been absorbed in the political and social affairs..." But nonetheless Sarah still assumed guardianship, and brought in a nurse and maid to watch the young girl. Sarah would take great pride in raising Sallie. The newlyweds moved in with Sarah until after the birth of their child Saidee in 1868. Sarah bequeathed some of the personal items of the President to Sallie's daughter Saidee, including the president's watch and glasses. Sallie sold and donated the presidential papers to the Library of Congress in the early 1900s. She also donated one of Sarah's inaugural gowns and a fan to the Smithsonian. In 1905 Sallie opened her own home in Nashville for social gatherings to exhibit the items she had inherited from Sarah and to tell the legacy of her great-uncle president Polk. During these gatherings and other social events she would introduce herself as the daughter to the president. Sallie continued living in Nashville after Sarah's death throughout her later life. The vast majority of the items she did not donate to the Library of Congress or the Smithsonian were left to her daughter, Saidee. Shortly before her death she helped her daughter Saidee found the James K. Polk Memorial Association along with other Nashville women, with the main intent of preserving the president's legacy.

In 1929 Sallie's daughter Saidee worked together with the state of Tennessee to purchase the only surviving private residence which the president lived in. The home, located in Columbia, Tennessee, was constructed by the president's father Samuel in 1816, and was the president's home for six years before his marriage to Sarah Childress in 1824. On acquisition of the home in 1929 The James K. Polk Memorial Association founded the James K. Polk Home, the presidential museum of James K. Polk.