Miss Sarah Childress

Sarah Childress Polk (1803-1891) was an intelligent, devout Tennessee woman. Her education, considered excellent for the time, was via a Moravian finishing school, but cut short by the untimely death of her father.

At twenty, she married Tennessee lawyer-with-ambition James Knox Polk. Legend says that it was Andrew Jackson himself who suggested that the young politician “look no farther” than Miss Childress when choosing a wife. Legend or fact, it proved to be good advice. The marriage was a happy union.

Mrs. Sarah Polk

Partly because of her innate intelligence, and perhaps mostly because the Polk marriage was childless, Sarah became an especially close companion to her politician husband.  Few letters exist between them, since they were seldom apart for very long leaving little need to correspond.

With no family responsibilities at home, little inclination toward traditional domesticity, and her health unimpaired by childbirth, Sarah was free to accompany her Congressman husband to Washington. He was happy for her company. The Congressional social set – men and women – liked her.

Sarah the Fashionista

Sarah was a good looking woman. She was not tall. (Polk himself was perhaps 5’7”.) But she was well-figured and had intelligent eyes. Her dark hair was arranged in fashionable corkscrew curls, sometimes adorned with feather plumes or other stylish accents. She favored jewel-toned deep colors, like royal blue or rich maroon or emerald green, which accented her dark complexion.

The low-cut Empire gowns popularized in America by Dolley Madison had long been passe by the mid-1840s when Sarah was First Lady. Necklines were generally higher; sleeves were long. While Sarah was considered impeccably attired, her taste was modest, even in a modest age. The few portraits and photographs of Mrs. Polk depict a well-dressed woman, but far from flashy. She had nothing of the overt glamorous style of Julia Tyler, her young predecessor, seventeen years her junior. Sarah was dramatic, understated – and looked smashing!

The Fans

Perhaps the most important accessory for a nineteenth century woman was her fan. A head covering of some kind was an age-old tradition and mandatory. Jewelry was a luxury. A lady’s fan however, was a necessity, particularly among women of a certain age when great changes occur. Fans had been around for centuries, and the basic style never varied. 

In their teens, young ladies had actual lessons in learning the “unspoken language” of fans for flirtatious coquetry. How it was opened, how it was closed, how it fluttered, could signal “I am interested/I am not interested.’ Sometimes it was for modesty or a fashion statement. But essentially a fan was used for its stated purpose: to create a breeze.

Clothing was designed to cover the body, especially women’s clothing, with its hoops and petticoats and yards and yards of material. It was hot, pure and simple.There was no air conditioning, nor any table-mounted electric fans. 

Most ladies’ fan frames were made from ivory or bone, and sometimes wood.  Then the ribs were covered with various fabrics or specialty papers, decorated in any number of ways.  Most women had several fans in their wardrobe, and being a high ranking congressional wife (Polk was Speaker of the House of Representatives for a time), Sarah no doubt had many.  She had them for daytime wear, for casual veranda-sitting, and for evening or formal occasions.  All were designed to coordinate with her gowns.

One of her documented (and existing) fans is made of a delicate white lace, which naturally went with everything.

Perhaps her most renowned fan is the one she was given by her husband at the time of his inauguration as president in 1845.  It was a magnificent object of hand-crafted paper with a portrait of her husband in the center and all Polk’s predecessors surrounding it. It was one-of-a-kind, and remains today as one of the treasures at a Polk family home in Columbia, Tennessee.  (Polk Place, their primary home in Nashville, was destroyed by fire long ago.) 

Ah, But The Metaphorical Fans

James Knox Polk retired from his single term in 1849, and died only three months later, many claim “from overwork.” Sarah was only forty-four, and had long been accustomed to playing an active albeit behind-the-scenes role in her husband’s career. Now she became a “professional widow” for more than four decades. Her “fans” now took on a metaphorical purpose: they allowed her to hide in public sight, which she believed was her womanly duty. It is said she seldom left her house in Nashville except to attend church.

By mid-nineteenth century, Victoriana culture was entrenched, and the prompt remarriage tradition of an earlier era was replaced by long, if not eternal, mourning. Like Mary Lincoln, Lucretia Garfield and Ida McKinley, widowed First Ladies who followed her, Sarah wore nothing but black thereafter.

She busied herself with some good works, hosting occasional parties for orphaned children, and enjoyed the weekly visits from her minister. But mostly she sorted and resorted, and organized and re-organized her husband’s papers. Her reputation and pious reserve kept Polk Place off-limits for both Union and Confederate soldiers, who otherwise used most of Tennessee as a Civil War battlefield. Visiting dignitaries to Nashville always made a point of paying their respects to the former First Lady. She herself made no political statements, and only released her slaves when it became law. 

Whatever talents or intelligence Sarah had, whatever opinions or political philosophies she espoused or decried, and whatever opportunities she may have let slip away, were forever hidden by her metaphorical fan. It kept her away from the public’s prying eye. 

Perhaps it also hid her self-inflicted boredom.

Sources:

Boller, Paul – Presidential Wives – 1988 Oxford University Press

Foster, Feather Schwartz – Mary Lincoln’s Flannel Pajamas and Other Stories from the First Ladies’ Closet – Koehler Publishing, 2016

Nelson, Anson and Fanny – Memorials of Sarah Childress Polk – ADF Randolph Company (reprint of 1892 publication)

Sarah Polk