distinguished families, second families, perhaps I should say. My mother

.

was of a family

of the name of Hanks, some of whom now remain in Adams, some others in Macon, counties, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky, about 1781 or 1782. .

His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like."

This effort to connect the president with the Lincolns of Massachusetts was afterward carried forward by others, who felt an interest greater than his own in establishing the fact. Yet if he had expected the quest to result satisfactorily, he would probably have been less indifferent about it; for it is obvious that, in common with all Americans of the old native stock, he had a strenuous desire to come of "respectable people;" and his very reluctance to have his apparently low extraction investigated is evidence that he would have been glad to learn that he belonged to an ancient and historical family of the old Puritan Commonwealth, settlers not far from Plymouth Rock, and immigrants not long after the arrival of the Mayflower. This descent has at last been traced by the patient genealogist.

1

3

So early as 1848 the first useful step was taken by Hon. Solomon Lincoln of Hingham, Massachusetts, who was struck by a speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln in the national House of Representatives, and wrote to ask facts as to his parentage. The response 1 stated substantially what was afterward sent to Mr. Fell, above quoted. Mr. Solomon Lincoln, however, pursued the search further, and printed the results.2 Later, Mr. Samuel Shackford of Chicago, Illinois, himself a descendant from the same original stock, pushed the investigation more persistently. The chain, as put together by these two gentlemen, is as follows: Hingham, Massachusetts, was settled in 1635. In 1636 house-lots were set off to Thomas Lincoln, the miller, Thomas Lincoln, the weaver, and Thomas Lincoln, the cooper. In 1638 other lots were set off to Thomas Lincoln, the husbandman, and to Stephen, his brother. In 1637 Samuel Lincoln, aged eighteen, came from England to Salem, Massachusetts, and three years later went to Hingham; he also was a weaver, and a brother of Thomas, the weaver. In 1644 there was a Daniel Lincoln in the place. All these Lincolns are believed to have come from the County of Norfolk in England, though what kinship existed be

1 Two letters, now in the possession of Mr. Francis H. Lincoln, of Boston, Mass.

2 New England Hist. and Gen. Register, Oct., 1865. 3 Ibid., April, 1887, vol. xli. p. 153.

4 See articles in N. E. H. and G. Reg. above cited. Mr. Lincoln's article states that in Norwich, Norfolk County, Eng., there

tween them is not known.

It is from Samuel that

the president appears to have been descended. Samuel's fourth son, Mordecai, a blacksmith, married a daughter of Abraham Jones, of Hull; 1 about 1704 he moved to the neighboring town of Scituate, and there set up a furnace for smelting iron ore. This couple had six children, of whom two were named respectively Mordecai and Abraham; and these two are believed to have gone to Monmouth County, New Jersey. There Mordecai seems to have continued in the iron business, and later to have made another move to Chester County, Pennsylvania, still continuing in the same business, until, in 1725, he sold out all his "Mynes & Minerals, Forges, etc."2 Then, migrating again, he settled in Amity, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, where, at last, death caught up with him. By his will, February 22, 1735-36, he bequeathed his land in New Jersey to John, his eldest son; and gave other property to his sons Mordecai and Thomas. He belied the old motto, for in spite of more than three removes he left a fair estate, and in the probate proceedings he is described as "gentleman." 3 In 1748 John sold all is a curious chased copper box with the inscription 'Abraham Lincoln, Norwich, 1731;'" also in St. Andrew's church in the same place a mural tablet: "In memory of Abraham Lincoln, of this parish, who died July 13, 1798, aged 79 years." Similarities of name are also noted.

،،

1 A town adjoining Hingham, Mass.

2 His brother Abraham also resided in Chester County, and died there, April, 1745.

8 N. and H., i. 3.

he had in New Jersey, and in 1758 moved into Virginia, settling in that part of Augusta County which was afterward set off as Rockingham County. Though his will has not been found, there is "ample proof," says Mr. Shackford, that he had five sons named Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Thomas and John. Of these, Abraham went to North Carolina, there married Mary Shipley, and by her had sons Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas, who was born in 1778. In 1780 or 1782, as it is variously stated, this family moved to Kentucky. There, one day in 1784, the father, at his labor in the field, was shot by lurking Indians. His oldest son, working hard by, ran to the house for a gun; returning toward the spot where lay his father's body, he saw an Indian in the act of seizing his brother, the little boy named Thomas. He fired, with happy aim; the Indian fell dead, and Thomas escaped to the house. This Thomas it was who afterward became the father of Abraham Lincoln.1 Of the other sons of Mordecai (great-uncles of the President), Thomas also went to Kentucky, Isaac went to Tennessee, while Jacob and John stayed in Virginia, and begat progeny who became in later time ferocious rebels, and of whom one wrote a very comical blustering letter to his relative the President; 2 and probably another, bearing oddly

1 A different pedigree, published in the Lancaster Intelligencer, Sept. 24, 1879, by David J. Lincoln, of Birdsboro, Berks County, Penn., is refuted by George Lincoln, of Hingham, Mass., in the Hingham Journal, Oct. 10, 1879.

2 N. and H., i. 4 note.

enough the name of Abraham, was a noted fighter.1 It is curious to observe of what migratory stock we have here the sketch. Mr. Shackford calls atten

tion to the fact that through six successive generations all save one were "pioneers in the settlement of new countries, "thus: 1. Samuel came from England to Hingham, Massachusetts. 2. Mordecai lived and died at Scituate, close by the place of his birth. 3. Mordecai moved, and settled in Pennsylvania, in the neighborhood which afterward became Berks County, while it was still wilderness. 4. John moved into the wilds of Virginia. 5. Abraham went to the backwoods of Kentucky, shortly after Boone's settlement. 6. Thomas moved first into the sparsely settled parts of Indiana, and thence went onward to a similar region in Illinois.

Thus in time was corroborated what Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1848 in one of the above-mentioned letters to Hon. Solomon Lincoln: "We have a vague tradition that my great-grandfather went from Pennsylvania to Virginia, and that he was a Quaker." It is of little consequence that this "vague tradition " was stoutly contradicted by the President's father, the ignorant Thomas, who indignantly denied that either a Puritan or a Quaker could be found in the line of his forbears, and who certainly seemed to set heredity at defiance if such were the case. But while thus repudiating others, Thomas himself was in some danger 1 N. and H., i. 4 note.