Cavanacor House

Cavanacor House is situated 1km outside Lifford, towards Letterkenny. It is one of the earliest, and best, examples of a plantation house remaining in Donegal. In continuous occupation since the seventeenth century, it was a rally point for the armies that amassed on the flat plains at Cavanacor prior to the Siege of Derry. King James II dined there during that time. Under his protection, the house survived the Jacobite retreat from Derry. Ironically though, while King James II dined at Cavanacor with his host, John Keyes, Keyes’ brothers, Thomas and Frederick, were within the walls of Derry defending it against James II.

 In 1634, Magdalene Tasker was born at Cavanacor, and then in the 1690s she married Capt. Robert Bruce Pollock. They and their children emigrated to America and settled in Somerset County, Maryland. Once in America, the family shortened their name to Polk. In 1795, James Knox Polk was born. A grandson, four times removed from Magdalene Tasker Polk, he became the 11th American President in 1845, a position he held until his death in 1849.