Polk Family Cemetery

Polk Family Cemetery. President James K. Polk State Historic Site. , Polk Family Cemetery , As one of Mecklenburg County's early family graveyards, the Polk family cemetery has special importance to the history of the area. The cemetery is the resting place for James K. Polk's grandmother, Maria Polk, and several other relatives who died before his birth. The cemetery also includes several Alexander graves, another well-known Mecklenburg County family., Original Cemetery , Over time, the graveyard faced neglect, vandalism, and exposure to natural elements. In 1988, the proposed Outer Loop of Interstate-485 threatened to bisect the cemetery. In response, the North Carolina Department of Transportation and Department of Natural and Cultural Resources moved it from its original location off of Old Nations Ford Road in Pineville to the President James K. Polk State Historic Site., The Bigham Workshop , During the 1760s, Samuel Bigham Sr. began and operated one of North Carolina's earliest and best known stonecutting workshops in the Steele Creek section of Mecklenburg County. An immigrant from Northern Ireland, Bigham lived in Pennsylvania before moving to North Carolina in 1763. For two generations, the Bigham family provided quality headstones for much of the Catawba Valley and parts of South Carolina. In the Polk family cemetery, the headstones of Maria Polk and Samuel and Margaret McClery may have been carved by Bigham.