Foundry Church (1845 location)

In 1845 President James K. Polk attended the Foundry Church, located on this spot (it has since moved to the East).

“Attended the Methodist Church (called the Foundery Church) today, in company with my private secretary, J. Knox Walker. It was an inclement day, there being rain from an early hour in the morning, and Mrs. Polk and the ladies of my household did not attend church to-day. Mrs. Polk being a member of the Presbyterian Church, I generally attend that church with her, though my opinions and predilections are in favor of the Methodist Church. This was my birthday, being fifty years old. The text was from the Acts of the Apostles, chap. 17, verse 31: ‘Because He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained.’ It was communion day, and the sermon was solemn and forcible. It awakened the reflection that I had lived fifty years, and that before fifty years more would expire I would be sleeping with the generations which have gone before me. I thought of the vanity of this world’s honors, how little they would profit me half a century hence, and that it was time for me to be putting my house in order.”

Just four years later he would be sleeping with the generations before, and yet he would not put his house in order until the day before. Learn more about it at McKendree Methodist in Nashville, Tennessee – site of his funeral.