Abraham Lincoln: a History — Volume 01

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families in the West bearing historic names and probably descended from well-known houses in the older States or in England, which, by passing through one or two generations of ancestors who could not read or write, have lost their continuity with the past as effectually as if a deluge had intervened between the last century and this. Even the patronymic has been frequently distorted beyond recognition by slovenly pronunciation during the years when letters were a lost art, and by the phonetic spelling of the first boy in the family who learned the use of the pen. There are Lincolns in Kentucky and Tennessee belonging to the same stock with the President, whose names are spelled "Linkhorn" and "Linkhern." All tha

ed in the office of the Register in Philadelphia, we gather that he was a man of considerable property. In the inventory of his effects, made after his death, he is styled by the appraisers, "Mordecai Lincoln, Gentleman." His son John received by his father's will "a certain piece of land lying in the Jerseys, containing three hundred acres," the other sons and daughters having been liberally provided for from the Pennsylvania property. This John Lincoln left New Jersey some years later, and about 1750 established himself in Rockingham County, Virginia. He had five sons, to whom he gave the names which were traditional in the family:- Abraham, the pioneer first mentioned,-Isaac, Jacob, Thomas, and John. Jacob and John remained in Virginia; the former was a soldier in the War of the Revolution, and took part as lieutenant in a Virginia regiment at the siege of Yorktown. Isaac went to a place on the Holston River in

f John Lincoln, and afterwards became a man of some prominence in Pennsylvania, serving in the Constitutional Convention in 1789-90.] among them-both being of Quaker lineage. By the will of Mordecai Lincoln, to which reference has been made, his "loving friend and neighbor" George Boone was made a trustee to assist his widow in the care of the property. Squire Boone, the father of Daniel, was one of the appraisers who made the inventory of Mordecai Lincoln's estate. The intercourse between the families was kept up after the Boones had removed to North Carolina and John Lincoln had gone to Virginia. Abraham Lincoln, son of John, and grandfather of the President, was married to Miss Mary Shipley [Transcriber's Note:

ng and hailed them with the hunter's caution, "Hullo, strangers; who are you?" They replied, "White men and friends." They proved to be Squire Boone and another adventurer from North Carolina. The younger Boone had made that long pilgrimage through the trackless woods, led by an instinct of doglike affection, to find his elder brother and share his sylvan pleasures and dangers. Their two companions were soon waylaid and killed, and the Boones spent their long winter in that mighty solitude undisturbed. In the spring their ammunition, which was to them the only necessary of life, ran low, and one of them must return to the settlements to replenish the stock. It need not be said which assumed this duty; the cadet went uncomplaining on his way, and Daniel spent three months in absolute loneliness, as he himself expressed it, "by myself, without bread, salt, o

etroit, [Footnote: Silas Farmer, historiographer of Detroit, informs us that Daniel Boone was brought there on the 10th of March, 1778, and that he remained there a month.] to show the Long-Knife chieftains of King Greorge that they also could exhibit trophies of memorable prowess, but they refused to give him up even to their British allies. In no quality of wise woodcraft was he wanting. He could outrun a dog or a deer; he could thread the woods without food day and night; he could find his way as easily as the panther could. Although a great athlete and a tireless warrior, he hated fighting and only fought for peace. In council and in war he was equally valuable. His advice was never rejected without disaster, nor followed but with advantage; and when the fighting once began there was not a rifle in Kentucky which could rival his. At the nine days' siege of Boonesboro' he took deliberate aim and killed a negro renegade who was harassing the garrison from a tree five hundred and twenty-five feet away, and whose head only was visible from the fort. The mildest and the quietest of men, he had killed dozens of enemies with his own

OLN). The original, of which this is a reduced fac-simile, i

efferson Cou

ich would have made his family rich if they had retained it. The county records show him to have been the possessor of a domain of some seventeen hundred acres. There is still in existence [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.] the original warrant, dated March 4, 1780, for four hundred acres of land, for which the pioneer had paid "into the publick Treasu

lled the minds of many of the leading men in America until they were driven out by graver cares and more imperative duties. Washington had acquired claims and patents to the amount of thirty or forty thousand acres of land in the West; Benjamin Franklin and the Lees were also large owners of these speculative titles. They formed, it is true, rather an airy and unsubstantial sort of possession, the same ground being often claimed by a dozen different persons or companies under various grants from the crown or from legislatures, or through purchase by adventurers from Indian councils. But about the time of which we are speaking the spirit of emigration had reached the lower strata of colonial society, and a steady

E. This record of the Lincoln Claim on Licking River is from

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ept hunters, trappers, and explorers-men who came merely to kill game, and possibly Indians, or to spy out the fertility of the land for the purpose of speculation. But in 1780 and 1781 a large number of families took up their line of march, and in the latter year a considerable contingent of women joined the little army of pioneers, impelled by an instinct which they themselves probably but half comprehended. The country was to be peopled, and there was no other way of peopling it but by the sacrifice of many lives and fortunes; and the history of every country shows that these are never lacking when they are wanted. The number of those who came at about the same time with the pioneer Lincoln was sufficient to lay the basis of a sort of social order. Early in the year 1780 three hundred "large family boats" arrived at the Falls of the Ohio, where the land had be

R'S CERTIFICATE (SLIGH

E 60, IN THE OFFICE

TUC

istened "Lazy Lawrence," and that was the end of him socially. Cowardice was punished by inexorable disgrace. The point of honor was as strictly observed as it ever has been in the idlest and most artificial society. If a man accused another of falsehood, the ordeal by fisticuffs was instantly resorted to. Weapons were rarely employed in these chivalrous encounters, being kept for more serious use with Indians and wild beasts; nevertheless fists, teeth, and the gouging thumb were often employed with fatal effect. Yet among this rude and uncouth people there was a genuine and remarkable respect for law. They seemed to recognize it as an absolute necessity of their existence. In the territory of Kentucky, and afterwards in that of Illinois, it occurred at several periods in the transition from counties to territories and states, that the country was without any organized authority. But the people were a law unto themselves. Their improvised courts and councils administered law and equity; contracts were enforced, debts were collected, and a sort of order was maintained. It may be said, generally, that the character of this people was far above their circumstances. In all the accessories of life, by which we are accustomed to rate communities and races in the scale of civilization, they were little removed from primitive barbarism. They dressed in the skins of wild beasts killed by themselves, and in linen stuffs woven by themselves. They hardly knew the use of iron except in their firearms and knives. Their food consisted almost exclusively of game, fish, and roughly ground corn- meal. Their exchanges were made by barter; many a child grew up without ever

AR BEECHLAND, KENTUCKY,

HANKS WERE

ase and certainty of nature evolving its results. And this they accomplished in the face of a savage foe surrounding their feeble settlements, always alert and hostile, invisible and dreadful as the visionary powers of the air. Until the treaty of Greenville, in 1795, closed the long and sanguinary history of the old Indian wars, there was no day in w

WING VARIOUS LOCALITIE

THE LINCOL

hree sons, Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas, to the edge of the clearing, and began the day's work. A shot from the brush killed the father; Mordecai, the eldest son, ran instinctively to the house, Josiah to the neighboring fort, for assistance, and Thomas, the youngest, a child of six, was left with the corpse of his father. Mordecai, reaching the cabin, seized the rifle, and saw through the loophole an Indian in his war-paint stooping to raise the child from the ground. He took deliberate aim at a white ornament on the breast of the savage and brought him down. The little boy, thus released, ran to the cabin, and M

ILE OF THE MARRIAGE BO

erved the honors of an illustrious paternity, learned the trade of a carpenter. He was an easy-going man, entirely without ambition, but not without self-respect. Though the friendliest and most jovial of gossips, he was not insensible to affronts; and when his slow anger was roused he

roper sequence of the entries, and gave to the Lincolns the date belonging to the next couple on the list.] while learning his trade in the carpenter shop of Joseph Hanks, in Elizabethtown, he married Nancy Hanks, a niece of his employer, near Beechland, in Washington County. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy fo

nection was composed of people so little given to letters that it is hard to determine the proper names and relationships of the younger members amid the tangle of traditional cousinships. [Footnote: The Hanks family seem to have gone from Pennsylvania and thence to Kentuc

ht her to a little house in Elizabethtown, where he and she and want dwelt together in fourteen feet square. The next year a daughter was born to them; and the next the young carpenter, not finding his work remunerative enough for his growing needs, removed to a little farm which he had bought on the easy terms then prevalent in Kentucky. It was on the Big South Fork of Nolin Creek, in what was then Hardin and

ever known; and there, in the midst of the most unpromising circumstances that ever witnessed t

ing Fork, and succeeded in getting a portion of it into cultivation. The title, however, remained in him only a litt

written by the Rev. Jesse Head, was lost sight of for many years, and about 1886 was

, and, having been always told at home that we must be good to the soldiers, I gave him my fish." This is only a faint glimpse, but what it shows is rather pleasant-the generous child and the patriotic household. But there is no question that these first years of his life had their lasting effect upon the temperament of this great mirthful and melancholy man. He had little schooling. He accompanied his sister Sarah [Footnote: This daughter of Thomas Lincoln is sometimes called Nancy and sometimes Sarah. She seem

rom one of his Virginia kinsmen, the last communication which ever came from them. It was written on paper ad

Esq., President of th

whipped out of your boots. To-day I met a gentleman from Anna, Illinois, and although he voted for you he says that the moment you

ery consideration,

R LIN

nton stock o

d for his courage and ferocity. He lay in wait and shot a Drunkard preacher, whom he sus

y, who gave much intelligent effort to genealogical researches, was convinced that the Abraham Lincoln who married Miss Hannah Winters, a daughter of Ann Boone, sister of the famous Daniel, was the President's grandfather. Waddell's "Annals of Augusta County" says he married Elizabeth Winter, a cousin of Daniel Boone. The Boone and Lincoln families were large and there were frequent intermarriages among them, and the patriarchal name of

y history of his State a subject of careful study, and to whom we are greatly indebted for information in regard to t

1785. We have in our possession the original patent issued by Governor Garrard, of Kentucky, to Abraham Lincoln for this p

near Green River Lick, entered June 7

is entry after his death. It is possible that this was the five-hundred-acre tract found in Boone's field-book, in the possession of Lyman C. Draper, Esq., Secretary of t

: The following is a co

the said Governor and his successors, we bind ourselves, our heirs, etc., jointly and severally, firmly by these presents, sealed with our seals and dated this 10th day of June, 1806. The condition of the above obligation is such that whereas there is a m

HARD BERRY [Seal]. "Witness,

nnection of Lincoln; h

avings of his father's carpenter shop. He tells a story which, if accurate, entitles him to the civic crown which the Romans used to give to one who saved the life of a citizen. When Gollaher was eleven and Lincoln eight the two boys we