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The Parents 

of 

Abraham 
Lincoln 




I 



By WILLIAM E. BARTON 



• The Parents of 
Abraham Lincoln 



tv^ 



An Address by 
WILLIAM E: BARTON 



,1 utlior of "TIk Smil of A hrdliditi Lincoln,'' ''The I'uternity 
of A hid lid III Lincoln." etc. 



I )cli\ ('led Ml tln' uiJivc of TIkmikis Liiicc^lii, (Joosc ^s'est 

I'uiiiic. iicjif .lancsx illc. Illinois, 

S('i»lciii]>ri- IS. 1!I1»L*. 



CHARLESTON. ILLINOIS 

The Chnrlesfon Daily Courier 

1922 






THE CELEBRATION AT ISHILOH 

Shiloh Church, which adjoins the cemetery where 
Thomas Lincoln and Sarah Bush Lincoln are buried, was 
recently remodeled and its facilities were enlarged. A 
service of rededication was held, and a memorial window 
was dedicated to the memory of Thomas and Sarah Lin- 
coln. Shortly after this rededication, a notable Lincoln 
celebration w'as held, and attended by people from the 
ncdo-hborhood and from several adjacent, towns. A number 
of people were present, who had i)ersonally known Thomas 
Lincoln, and many who had known his widow. The 
speaker of the day was Dr. William E. Barton, who de- 
livered two addresses, one on "The Greatness of Abraham 
Lincoln" and the other on "The Parents of Abraham Lin- 
coln." The church was packed to its capacity for the 
mornino- address. This was followc^d by a picnic dinner, 
and reunion of old friends. The aft(Mnoon meeting was 
held out of doors, in the cemetery. Dr. Barton delivered 
his address standing beside the graves of Thonms and 
Sarah Lincoln. 



7T. ^. J^c..^^Ij>_^ 



The Parents of Ahralicnii Lincoln 



'rillcc liiiiihiv lolccs iio lo I lie iii;ikiiii: of ;iiiv mail. 
Fii'sl is that iiivslci ions clciiiciil oT pcisoiialil v wliciciii 
('\(M V man dillVrs riom cnciv oIIh-i- man. NO I w d mt'ii, 
('\('ii iIioul:!! Ixtiii nl' ilh' same |»aiciiis and iran-d in llic 
saiiK' siiri-oiindiiius. i»i(i\"' In hr wlndiv similai-. NO two 
IcaNC.s upon I he 1 1 cc. no i w o Idadt-s of ^^la.ss, no I wo i liiiml* 
])iiiils ol I he human hand, no I wo iu-ain.s, no two ihaiac- 
tcis arc jti ccisclv alike. The .second of ihc forces ^^•llich 
make us w hal we are is hcrediiy. lOxciv man is wlial he 
is i)arH,v because of what his jjaicnls, his iiraii<ll>;ii-eii(s 
and his reiiHMe ancestors were. The third of these forces 
is en\ ii onineiil. lOverv man's life is shaped by the i nil u- 
eiice ol other lives, by soil, <jiinale, and other conditions 
suri'otiudiiiii him. The life ol' Abraham Lincoln was what 
it was partly because <tf his successi\c eii\ ironnients, 
partly be<ause of his inheritance, and partly In'cause of 
his own ])ersoiialily. It is tittinii that we should consider 
today somethini: of iiis inheritance throu<ih his father, 
Thomas Lincoln, his mother, Nancy Ihndcs, and the subse- 
(^ueut intiuence uikhi him of his devoted step-mother, Sarah 
JJusli Johnson, tlie second wife of Thomas l^iiu-oln. 

It is siiritrisiuii that so little reliable work has been 
(lone in this lield. On the death of Abraham Lincoln no 
member of the Lincoln family was present at his funeral 
sa\(' his widow, ALiiy Todd Lincoln, and her t wo siirvi\ inu 
sons, Robert and Tluunas. Althouuli most of the Todds 
"Were Confederates, there were Todd relatives at the fu- 
neral, but no Lincoln. There lias Ix'eii Itut little oi»por- 
ttiiiity to learn t<> what extent Abraham Lincoln was a 
Lincoln. His own contact with the Lincoln family was 
exce<'(lin|Lily meaiicr. 

This w'e know, however, thai Abraham Lincoln was 
thorouiihly a I>incolii. W'e know enough of the Lincoln 
family traits to assure ourselves that howcxcr ureal the 
contrast lietweeii him and eitliei- of his parenis, he jiad an 
im|)ortant herita;.ie from both. While Tlnnnas Lincoln 
never could have been as jiireat a niaii as his son. and while 
Xancy Hanks ne\er couteinj)laled the possibility <»f hei-self 
becomiiijLi a notable woman, ea< h of these two uave s<)me- 
thinj»" important to tiie makin,u: of Lincoln. The pi( tiire 
of Nancy Haid<s, which has come down to us. is \a^ue in 
its outline and elusive in its definition. lint Lincoln him- 
self said of his mother that she was a woman of strong 

3 



mind and character and that from her he inherited his 
power of analysis and his logical mind. Thomas Lincoln 
died before his son became famons, and he was held in no 
very high regard by Lincoln's earlier biographers; but in 
proportion as we come to know the Lincolns, and tO' be 
able to form some judgment of the character of Thomas 
Lincoln, we tind him to have been indispensable in the 
heredity of his great son, 

No' one of us can spare any one of his ancestors. There 
is no way in which Ave can short-circuit the line of descent 
so as to cut. out the obscurest and least interesting of them.. 
Each one of them, male and female, is indispensable in his 
or her own generation : and had the place of any one man 
or any one woman among them been taken by any other 
man or woman in that generation, we should not. be what 
now we are. 

We have to reckon with Abraham Lincoln as he w^as ; 
and it is in some respects a minor question how he came 
to be what he was ; but this we know, that his personality 
was a strange compound of diverse elements, some of them 
inherited from his paternal and some from his maternal 
lines, and that he needed all of them to be Abraham Lin- 
coln. 

So much of error has been printed as truth, it may be 
well to give a few dates and other biographical data. 

First of all, the dates given on the tombstone of 
Thomas Lincoln, I am confident, are correct, and not those 
furnished in some of the biographies. He was born in 
Rockingham County, Virginia, January 7, 1778, and he 
died January 15, 1851. He Avas the youngest of three sons, ^ /( / 



and next to the youngest of five children of Abrahai 
Bath^h^baljin^^ His father was not tAvice married; 
the five children Ave re all children of one mother, who re- 
moved to Kentucky A^ith her husband in 1782, and long 
siuwived him. Abraham Lincoln the elder Avas killed by 
Indians in May, 178G, and not in 1784, as is irsually stated. 
Thomas Lincoln learned the carpenter's trade. He was 
probably not a very skilled carpenter, but he Avas compe- 
tent to do the kind of Avork Avhicli the frontier required, 

Nancy Hanks, first AAafe of Thomas Lincoln, and 
mother of the President, Avas born in Virginia in 1783 ; 
removed Avith her family to Kentucky in early childhood ; 
was married to Thomas Lincoln by Eev, Jesse Head on 
Beech Fork, in Washington Oounty, on June 12, 1806. 
With her hirsband and children she removed to Indiana 
in 181G, and she died October 5, 1818. 

4 . 



S;il;lll or S;illv Ulisli. scrolid wile of 'I'lltilllJIs IJli((»lll, 

lived ill lOli/alM'i lihiw II. KmiiKkv. ;iim| maiiicd. lii'Ht, 
I):iiii('l dohiistoii, li,\ ulioiii slir Icid ilin-c < liildrni, .loliu 
1)., Sarah and Matilda. Allcr llir dcalh til liti lii.sl liijs- 
l»aiid, slic mail i«'d 'I lidiiias LiiHolii DcceiulK-r L', ISIH. She 
was a iiiMxl iiiollicr. Ii<»ili (i» lici own <liildit'ii and lo lin' 
t\\(» <liildi('ii of 'riioiiias LiiMt.lii. Saiiili ami Ai)ialiaiii. 
Slir died A|Mil 10. IS(il), and is Itiiiird licit' hi side lici Inis- 
band. ilcr inlliiciK-c U|)(iii I lie lil'c of Al>raliaiii IJncidii 
was wliollv i:(.(>d. lie lifid Imi in liuiior, and slic clu'risln'd 
his iiH'inorv wiili a licauiilul and iriilv iiiolhcrly allVctioii. 

Standiiiii licic loda.N h.v Ihc uravc of 'riionias Ijiiir<dii. 
and ihal of his second wife, Sally Uusli. the second mother 
ol" Ahraham ljin((dn. we liaNc to icniind oiirseh'es that 
there is much iiee<l of re\isioii of |io|)ular Uiiowledue, or 
what passes I'or kiiowledjic. <(Hiceiiiiiiu Liiicoln's ])areiits. 
His step-mother survived him. and lived to Iw interviewed 
by the earlier bioiirajjliers. She was able to bear her lesti- 
iiaaiy that Abraham was always a i:o<><l boy and never 
sp(»ke to her a cioss wortl. and that she loxcd him as her 
own son. 1 5ut Thomas aud Xamy Lincoln died loiin Iw'fore 
Abiaham, and there is mueli error commonly acee|>led as 
truth iu the literal lire coiicerniim both of them. 

It is olleii alleued thai the name of Thomas Ijiicoln 
was not LiiH-oln but lankhorn. N'arious aiitliors ha\(' de- 
clared that this l)ian; h ol" the family iievei- wrote the name 
as Lincoln until Abiaham Lincoln himself obtained siitli- 
cieiit education to settle the s|ielliiiii. As recent a writer 
as Norman Ilapiiood says of Thomas Lincoln, or Linkhorii. 
"His name ^vas under the lircuinstances unstable, but in 
Indiana it showed a lieneral drift toward Lickern. away 
from the favoiite Kentiu-ky form ol Linkhorii. sett limn it?* 
present sp<'llini: many years later in Illinois." .Mr. Ilap- 
UiMid is wroji<i in this and in niiii h iM'sides. In the back- 
woods, not only the inline of Lincoln but most other names 
wei-e niisiM'ononnced and misspelled. ]»ut I have not found 
one siniile instance of its beinii misspelled by a member of 
the family. Thomas Limoln and Thomas Limoln's father 
Abraham and Thomas Lincoln's uncle 'i'liomas. for wlnuii 
he was name(i. and his i:randfather and his i:reat grand- 
father all sitiiied their names jyincolii. 

it is <ifteii alleiie<l and commonly iM'liexed that 
Thomas Lincoln was taiiuhl to read and writ*' by his first 
wif(\ Nancy Hanks. ()ii the contrary, he siy^ned his mime 
befoic he was married. We ha\e reason to Udievi^ that 
Xancv Hanks did write, but in the onlv d<Munjent that lias 



been discoAeied executed by these two, Thomas Lincoln 
signed his name and Xancv made her mark. It is true that 
Tlionias Lincoln's education was very meager. As his 
famous son said of him, he was able "bungiingly to write 
his own name" and that was all. But that w^as something 
of a distinction in a time when so many men in contem- 
porary life and with like advantages signed their names 
w^th a cross. 

It is often alleged that Thomas Lincoln was cheated 
out of his inheritance by his two older brothers, Mordecai 
and Josiah, MQrdecai taking the whole property by riglit 
of primogeniture and distnbuting a minor portion to 
Josiah by leaving Thomas entirely unprovided for. On the 
contrary, it appears that Mordecai as heir-at-law of his 
father represented honorably the intei'ests of the whole 
family, k^oon after Thomas Lincoln became of age he was 
able tO' buy an improved farm and to pay for it in cash. 
The money presumably had come to him through the set- 
tlement of his father's estate. 

Vei'y nearly everything that has been written about 
Thomas Lincoln's three farms in Kentucky is wrong. The 
historians and biographers, even the best of them, -have 
the three hopelessly mixed up, and hardly anything that 
they tell about them is authentic. 

It is commonly asserted that Thomas Lincoln and his 
first wife, ]^ancy Hanks, were first cousins, she being the 
daughter of Joseph and Nancy Shipley Hanks, and he the 
son of Abraham and Mary Shipley Lincoln, and that 
Nancy was brought up by a third of the five Shipley sis- 
ters, her dear Aunt Lucy, wife of Richard Beuiy. Thomas 
Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were not cousins: we might 
even go the Hibernian length of saying that "neither of 
them were cousins." Her mother was not Nancy Shipley 
and his mother was not Mary Shipley, and her Aunt Lucy 
was not Aunt Lucy, but was named Rachel and theie was 
no proof that she was Nancy's aunt. 

It is commonly asserted that Thomas Lincoln was 
virtually a pauper, and pathetic stories are told of the ex- 
treme poverty of himself and wife at. the time of the birth 
of Abraham. The Lincoln family was poor, even as pov- 
erty is judged in the backwoods: but there exist -records of 
certain purcliases made by Thomas Lincoln of articles for 
the home, showing that even in those primitive days in the 
backwoods of Kentucky the discomfort was noti quite so 
great nor the povei ty so wretched as has been described. 

Authors have seemed to feel the necessity of going to 





<uic oi- luo cxIUMiifs ill ilirii <|(S( ii|»i idii (if till- cjiilv lil'c 
of Lincoln. I'lillicr llicy idtiili/c il, so llial llific is no rral 
|»o\('ltv, or llicv cNJiilUcI illc < (Hldil ions of s(|ll;iloi- t(> utU*r 
w iclrlicdiicss. Ncillicr is (|nilf iiiir. 

It is oricii wriiriiicd tlint Tlioiiiiis Lincoln owned no 
live slock, :iiid Inid to Ikiitow lioiscs \\itli A\lii<li to iiiakr 
liis iiii^ialioii ri(»iii Kciilutkv. ( Mi l lie coiiti;ir\, 'riioiiuis 
Lincoln owned :i lioise liejore lie was of aj^e, and diiiin.u 
liis nianied life, as sliowii hv autlienti<- and <-onte!iipoiai-v 
lists, lie alwavs had at ieasi one Morse and <<niiinoiil_v niofc 
than one. 'riieic is e\ ideiu c thai In- was soniethini: of a 
hoi'se-hfeeder. Al one lime lie owned a stallion and sev- 
eral niares. I le also owned <at t le. 

It is olteii aCliiiiied that Thonias liincoln \\ as a kiml 
of reliiiiotis vaiiiant, having no settled relinioiis liCe Imt 
driltinii in a dciclict wav into one sect al'tei- another aiul 
hein^ bronulit into clnircli nienih<'islii|> lJirou<:li tlie infln- 
elire of his se( Olid wile. ()|i t !ie collt raiv. 'rilollias IJlicolli 
was a ineinlier of the church in Kentiickv. avIumc Nancy 
Hanks also appears to have been a ineinber. and Nvlieii lie 
joined the cIiiik h in Indiana with liis se<-oiid wile, Sarah 
Hush Lincoln, he joined hy letter and she by experience. 
He was a <hiirch faenilier liefore slie was. He ^vas an oHi- 
cial nienilHr of the cliiiii Ii. sonietiiiies actinu; as uK)derat<H', 
sonietinies as referee in matters of arbitration ]H'twe<Mi 
<hui(h nienilMM's, sonietinies as deleuate U) other churches. 

Thomas Lincoln was an easyuoinii man, without am- 
bition, and he cannot be <alled industrious. l»ut lie was 
fiieiidly, honest, neiiihboily. and. Jiid!.:<'(l liy the standards 
of his day, temiieiate. He won the hearts of two m>od 
women. The lirsi of these was Xaiicy Hanks, a <liast<' 
younii Woman, who lMM|iieat lied to her son tine (pialities of 
character. tenip<'ranieiit. disposition and ]>ow('r of mental 
i;ias|); while he b<'(|iieat lied a ueiiial disposition, sound 
ii(M)d sense, a lo\(' of sioi y-lelliiiii, and those <'ompanion- 
abb' (pialities wlii( h meant so much to i1h' life of Abraham 
LiiK olii. The other was Sarah I'usli Lincoln, \\]\^\ made 
Tlnunas a loxiiiu and faiihliil wife and Abraham a devoted 
mother. In her yoiiii;:ei yeais she was alert, activ«', imlus- 
trious ami all her life she was a true and siiu'(M'o Chris- 
tian Avomaii. MiM h pity has been wasted upon lier for hav- 
iu»»' married Thomas Lincoln. There is no evidence that 
sho felt the need of such pity: ii<u- is it any lilM-l upon lior 
first husband to say that her second marriage brought her 
(piite as much happiness as the lirst. 

Of the vast <piaiitities of literature that have Im'cii ju-o- 



duced concerning Thomas Lincoln and liis two marriages, 
not quite all is false, but more than half of it is in great 
n^ed of revision, and some is utter trash. The parents of 
Lincoln were undistinguished, but they were good people, 
and neither Lincoln nor Ave have any occasion tO' be 
ashamed of them. There is of course a. marked contrast 
between their obscurity and his immortal fame, but except 
for them we should never have had him. They helped to 
make him the man he was. 

We hold in lasting honor the memory of Abraham 
Lincoln. We are in no danger of honoring him more 
higlily than he deserves. He is worthy of all our devotion. 
But just now we are remembering; these humble folk, his 
parents, his father, his mother and his step-mother. They 
were a part of the common stuff of American life in that 
period of movement and of new settlement, with nothing 
to distinguisli them above their neighbors, save this, only, 
that from their home went forth into the world a mighty 
leader of mankind. We corrld not have expected that any 
such son as Abraham Lincoln should have gone forth from 
their cabin, but we have no reason to be surprised that 
such wna the case. In their veins flowed good, sturdy, 
clean American blood. They were honest, virtuous, sober 
people. They were sincere and religious. With little edu- 
cation, they had good sense and good native ability. They 
contributed the qualities w^hich w^ere essential to the 
heredity and early environment of the man who was to 
save this nation and to make it forever free. Let us honor 
today the honest, sturdy pioneers of whom they were fair 
average examples. Let us be glad that from homes as 
humble as theirs and descended from families as little 
known to fame as theirs had been, so gTeat a man could 
go forth. For this is one chief hope of American life, that 
our leaders are tO' be made oirt of the stuff of our common 
manhood. From fathers and mothers as simple and un- 
pretentious as Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, from 
homes as poor as that of Thonms Lincoln and Sally Bush, 
are to go forth men of learning and power. These are in 
large measure the hope of America, and increasingly are 
they to be the hope of the w^orld. 



weo 




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