Autograph from the Chamberlain collection, Boston
Public Library.
From a photograph by Brady in the Library of the State Department at
Washington.
Autograph from the Chamberlain collection, Boston
Public Library.
From the painting by W.F. Halsall in the Capitol
at Washington.
THE RAW MATERIAL
Abraham Lincoln knew little concerning his progenitors,
and rested well content with the scantiness of his
knowledge. The character and condition of his
father, of whom alone upon that side of the house he
had personal cognizance, did not encourage him to pry
into the obscurity behind that luckless rover.
He was sensitive on the subject; and when he was applied
to for information, a brief paragraph conveyed all
that he knew or desired to know. Without doubt
he would have been best pleased to have the world
take him solely for himself, with no inquiry as to
whence he came,—as if he had dropped upon
the planet like a meteorite; as, indeed, many did
piously hold that he came a direct gift from heaven.
The fullest statement which he ever made was given
in December, 1859, to Mr. Fell, who had interrogated
him with an eye “to the possibilities of his
being an available candidate for the presidency in
1860:” “My parents were both born
in Virginia, of undistinguished 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.
