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.

3 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 attention 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.

of being repudiated; for so pained have some persons been by the necessity of recognizing Thomas Lincoln as the father of the President, that they have welcomed, as a happy escape from this so miserable paternity, a bit of gratuitous and unsupported gossip, published, though perhaps with more of malice than of faith, by Mr. Herndon, to the effect that Abraham Lincoln was the illegitimate son of some person unknown, presumably some tolerably well-to-do Kentuckian, who induced Thomas to assume the rôle of parent.

Upon the mother's side the ancestral showing is meagre, and fortunately so, since the case seems to be a bad one beyond reasonable hope. Her name was Nancy Hanks. She was born in Virginia, and was the illegitimate child of one Lucy Hanks. Nor was she the only instance of illegitimacy 2 in a family which, by all accounts, seems to have been very low in the social scale. Mr. Herndon calls them by the dread name of "poor whites," and gives an unappetizing sketch of them.3 Throughout his pages and those of Lamon there is abundant and disagreeable evidence to show the correctness of his estimate. Nancy Hanks herself, who certainly was not to blame for her parentage, and perhaps may have improved matters by an infusion of better blood from her 1 Herndon, 3.

2 The unpleasant Dennis Hanks was an illegitimate son of an 'aunt of the President's mother." Herndon, 13; and see Lamon, 12.

3 Herndon, 14.

unknown father, is described by some as a very rare flower to have bloomed amid the bed of ugly weeds which surrounded her. These friendly writers make her a gentle, lovely, Christian creature, too delicate long to survive the roughness of frontier life and the fellowship of the shiftless rover to whom she was unfittingly wedded.1 Whatever she may have been, her picture is exceeding dim and has been made upon scant and not unquestionable evidence. Mr. Lincoln seems not often to have referred to her; but when he did so it was with expressions of affection for her character and respect for her mental qualities, provided at least that it was really of her, and not of his step-mother that he was speaking, a matter not

clear from doubt.2

On June 10, 1806, Thomas Lincoln gave bond in the “just and full sum of fifty pounds" to marry Nancy Hanks, and two days later, June 12, he did so, in Washington County, Kentucky.3 She was then twenty-three years old. February 12, 1807, their daughter Sarah was born, who was married and died leaving no issue. February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born; no other children came save a boy who lived only a few days.

The domestic surroundings amid which the babe

1 Holland, 23; Lamon, 11; N. and H., i. 24; Herndon, 13, 28; Raymond, 20; but Raymond is no authority as to Lincoln's youth; and Holland is little more valuable for the same period. 2 Lamon, 32. But see Herndon, 13.

8 N. and H., i. 23; Herndon, 5; but see Lamon, 10.