973.7L63 Coleman, D. M. (Mrs. 
 C2C677t C. H. Coleman) 
 
 Thomas Lincoln: the Father 
 of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 the Class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER 
 
Thomas Lincoln 
 
 The Father of 
 Abraham Lincoln 
 
 by D. M. COLEMAN 
 
 Copyright 1956 by D. M. Coleman 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://archive.org/details/thomaslincolnfatOOcole 
 
i7Ul 
 
 
 (This short life of Thomas Lincoln 
 is based on a manuscript by Dr. 
 Charles H. Coleman, of Eastern State 
 College, Charleston, Illinois, who is 
 writing the definitive life of Thomas 
 Lincoln.) 
 
 The Father of Abraham Lincoln: 
 
 A statue of History in front of the 
 Archives Building in Washington, D. C, 
 bears the inscription: "The past is pro- 
 logue"; and a study of Abraham Lincoln's 
 ancestry, and particularly of his father's 
 life, is rewarding to those who wonder 
 what forces, what influences shaped this 
 truly great man— the sixteenth president of 
 the United States. 
 
 In most of the biographies of Abraham, 
 Thomas Lincoln, the father, and his an- 
 cestors have borne the burden of Abraham 
 Lincoln's lack of formal education and of 
 economic and cultural opportunities in his 
 youth. Thomas has, variously, been called 
 "shiftless", "poor white trash", and "ignor- 
 ant". Yet an examination of the records 
 remaining of his life show that, from man- 
 hood on, he was a responsible citizen who 
 paid his debts and his taxes and enjoyed 
 the respect of his neighbors and the af- 
 fection of his family and friends. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, himself, had a dis- 
 torted picture of his father and of his 
 father's family. He told a would-be biog- 
 rapher in I860: 
 
It's a great piece of folly to attempt 
 to make anything out of me or my 
 early life. It can all be condensed in 
 a single sentence, and that sentence 
 you will find in Gray's Elegy: "the 
 short and simple annals of the poor/ 
 
 Abraham Lincoln also wrote at one 
 Time: 
 
 My father, Thomas Lincoln, by the 
 early death of his father, and the 
 very narrow circumstances of his 
 mother, even in childhood was a wan- 
 dering, laboring boy, and grew up 
 literally without education. 
 
 William H. Herndon, Lincoln's law part- 
 ner, in his True Story of a Great Life, pub- 
 lished in 1889, painted a lurid picture of 
 Lincoln's background; but it remained for 
 Woodrow Wilson to write the most damn- 
 ing, and certainly the most unjustified, 
 description of Lincoln's family background 
 in his book Division and Reunion, publish- 
 ed in 1893: 
 
 Abraham Lincoln came of the most 
 unpromising stock on the continent, 
 the 'poor white trash' of the South. 
 His shiftless father moved from place 
 to place in the western country, fail- 
 ing where everybody else was suc- 
 cessful in making a living; and the 
 boy spent the most susceptive years 
 of his life under no discipline bit that 
 of degrading poverty. 
 
 Thomas Lincoln was a man of modest 
 attainments and modest ambition. As he 
 
followed the advancing frontier, he was 
 one of the thousands of "unexceptional 
 pioneers" who contributed so much to the 
 making of our nation, a nation his son was 
 destined to save from disruption. 
 But let's start at the beginning. 
 
 Ancestry of Thomas Lincoln 
 
 The name Lincoln is very old, going 
 back to the days of the Roman occupation 
 of Britain, according to A. J. Beveridge. 
 Lindum was a Roman colony established 
 about 86 A.D. Lindum-colonia, Lindum-col- 
 ony, Lincolon, came in time by successive 
 modifications to Lindcoln, and finally to 
 Lincoln (always preserving the silent let- 
 ter "1" that shows its Roman origin). It was 
 the name of a place first, and then after- 
 wards the name of persons residing or 
 born in that place. 
 
 We can trace back in England four 
 generations of Lincolns before the Samuel 
 Lincoln who emigrated to Salem, Massa- 
 chusetts, in 1637, and who is the direct 
 ancestor of the sixteenth President of the 
 United States: Abraham Lincoln. Our Lin- 
 colns, the ancestors of those who came to 
 America, came from Norfolk County in 
 England. 
 
 First, there was a Robert Lincoln, 
 who lived and died (1543) in 
 Hingham, Norfolk, England; 
 
 Then there was his son Robert, who 
 
died in 1556 in Hingham; 
 Then his son Richard who died in 
 
 1620 in Hingham; 
 Then his son Edward (the father 
 
 of Samuel) who died in 1640 in 
 
 Hingham. 
 
 The story of why Samuel Lincoln came 
 to the New World is an interesting one. 
 Richard Lincoln, his grandfather, was mar- 
 ried four times. His fourth marriage at an 
 advanced age to a woman younger than 
 himself resulted in his cutting off his oldest 
 son (Edward by his first wife) with a very 
 small amount of property, and giving the 
 largest part of his estate to the fourth 
 wife's children. The children of the oldest 
 son, therefore, were practically landless; 
 and so Samuel, one of Edward's children, 
 emigrated to America to make his fortune. 
 He sailed at the age of 18 years as a weav- 
 er's apprentice to one Francis Lawes who, 
 with his wife Lydia and daughter Mary 
 and maid Anne Smith and Samuel Lincoln, 
 arrived in Salem, Massachusetts, in June of 
 1637. 
 
 Samuel Lincoln soon moved to Hing- 
 ham, Massachusetts, apparently having 
 worked out his apprenticeship. He married 
 one Martha Lewis (?), and they had eleven 
 children. The direct ancestor of Thomas 
 Lincoln and of his son Abraham Lincoln was 
 the fourth child of Samuel Lincoln: Morde- 
 cai. Mordecai married Sarah, daughter of 
 Abraham Jones, and had four children by 
 
her, the first son AAordecai being the an- 
 cester of Thomas Lincoln. Their second son 
 they named Abraham, and this is the first 
 time the name "Abraham" appears in the 
 Lincoln lineage. 
 
 The pioneer instinct prevailed in this 
 family. Of the seven Lincolns in direct 
 line from the original immigrant Samuel 
 to Abraham, the President, not one died 
 in the community in which he was born: 
 AAordecai Lincoln (son of the original immi- 
 grant Samuel) died in Scituate, Massa- 
 chusetts, in 1727; his son AAordecai, born 
 in Scituate, died in Berks County, Pennsyl- 
 vania, in 1736; his son John was born in 
 Freehold, New Jersey, and died in Vir- 
 ginia, in 1788; his son Abraham (the father 
 of our Thomas Lincoln and who was always 
 called "Captain" Abraham presumably be- 
 cause of his rank in the militia service) 
 probably was born in Berks County, Penn- 
 sylvania, and died in Kentucky in 1786. 
 
 And so we come to Thomas, who was 
 born in Virginia on Linville Creek in what 
 was soon to became Rockingham County, 
 in January, 1778, the fourth child of "Cap- 
 tain" Abraham and Bathsheba Lincoln. The 
 next time you are driving through the 
 lovely Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, on 
 state route No. 42, go into the Linville 
 Creek neighborhood of Rockingham Coun- 
 ty, and ask to be shown the handsome 
 brick house of Jacob Lincoln (brother of 
 
"Captain" Abraham). Jacob Lincoln's house 
 has ten rooms and, despite its age of a 
 century and a half, is still one of the most 
 substantial and beautiful homes in that 
 area. It doesn't bear out the "poverty 
 stricken" theme of the President's imme- 
 diate relatives. 
 
 Thomas' Life in Virginia and Kentucky 
 
 At the time of Thomas' birth, his 
 thirty-four year old father owned 415 
 acres of rich Shenandoah Valley farm land. 
 His mother, Bathsheba, was the daughter 
 of Alexander Herring, a prosperous farmer 
 of the neighborhood. The Lincolns and the 
 Herrings were not Tidewater aristocrats; 
 rather they were Valley farmers, independ- 
 ent, hard working, and prosperous. 
 
 Thomas Lincoln was four years old in 
 1782. That was the time of the family's 
 great migration to Kentucky. They traveled 
 in wagons southwest from Linville Creek 
 for 250 miles. Then at the Block House, a 
 point seven miles east of the beginning 
 of the Wilderness Road (near the city of 
 Gate City, Virginia today), it is probable 
 that they swapped their wagons for the 
 pack horses of some east bound party just 
 arriving from over the Wilderness Road. 
 The Wilderness Road was then only a trail 
 leading into Kentucky, one of the number- 
 less well trodden paths crisscrossing the 
 country that had been made by the Indians. 
 
The Wilderness trail had been straightened 
 out to some extent in 1775 by Daniel Boone 
 and a group of axemen in the pay of 
 Richard Henderson, one of the great 
 colonizers of Kentucky. However, it would 
 still only take single file travel in 1782. 
 
 Why "Captain" Abraham picked out 
 this time to go into Kentucky is a question 
 indeed. Indian attacks on the Wilderness 
 Road in the 1780's were not just a vague 
 hazard; they were an ever present danger. 
 In 1784, two years after the migration of 
 the Lincolns, over one hundred travelers 
 on the Wilderness Road were murdered 
 by Indians. Not only did there exist the 
 Indians' burning indignation with the white 
 men who were taking over their land and 
 pushing them farther back all the time, 
 but the British Colonel Hamilton from his 
 headquarters in Detroit, fighting the set- 
 tlers in our Revolutionary War, had en- 
 listed the Indians 7 aid, promising them 
 that, if they frightened the white Ameri- 
 cans out of the west, they could have it all 
 to themselves. The British furnished fire- 
 arms to the Indians. The last battle of 
 the American Revolution was fought at 
 Blue Licks, Kentucky, August 19, 1782, 
 between the Kentucky settlers and the 
 British and Indians. Why did "Captain" 
 Abraham pick out this unsettled and fear- 
 ful time to start for the west? To four 
 year old Thomas the trip must have been 
 
a tremendous adventure. To the adults, 
 who knew of the Indian threat and the 
 hardships facing the pioneer, a period of 
 great soul searching must have prefaced 
 their decision to make the attempt. 
 
 When "Captain" Abraham and Bath- 
 sheba Lincoln came to Kentucky in 1782, 
 he already had 1200 acres of Kentucky 
 land, much of it in the fertile "Blue Grass" 
 section of central Kentucky. He had ac- 
 quired this on a previous trip, made alone, 
 before the family migration. 
 
 The Lincolns, having successfully passed 
 over the Wilderness Road, lived on two 
 pioneer farms in Kentucky; at first on 800 
 acres on the Green River in Lincoln County 
 and then on 400 acres on Long Run in Jef- 
 ferson County. "Captain" Abraham and the 
 older sons felled trees, cleared fields, and 
 planted and harvested corn, hemp, flax, 
 and other crops. Always present was the 
 danger from Indians: roving war parties 
 or lurking assassins. A document in the 
 Durrett Collection at the University of Chi- 
 cago contains a list of subscribers to an 
 Indian scalp fund in Jefferson County, and 
 reads as follows: 
 
 We, the subscribers, promise to pay 
 the sum annexed to our respective 
 names for every Indian scalp taken 
 in the County of Jefferson on the 
 west of the main road leading from 
 Louisville to Sheppardsville, within 
 six months from date. 
 
 8 
 
There follows a list of names with amounts 
 ranging from three pounds down. Some 
 are marked paid! 
 
 During 1782 "Captain" Abraham 
 bought about 2800 more acres of land, 
 some of it on the Green River and some of 
 it on the Licking River. 
 
 Tragedy struck the family in 1786. 
 They had moved to a pioneer fort called 
 Hughes Station, close to the Long Run farm 
 (now near present day Louisville). One day 
 in May, 1786, "Captain" Abraham was 
 working in his field with his three sons. 
 An Indian shot the father dead from am- 
 bush, and then started towards little 
 Tommy. Thirteen year old Josiah rushed to 
 the fort for help, but fifteen year old AAor- 
 decai ran to the unfinished cabin for his 
 gun and killed the Indian, avenging his 
 father and saving his brother Thomas. 
 
 This family tragedy was probably the 
 reason for the widow Bathsheba moving 
 with her five children to the safer and more 
 settled neighborhood of Washington Coun- 
 ty, Kentucky, soon thereafter. Thomas lived 
 with his mother on Beech Fork in Washing- 
 ton County until he was 18 years old, prob- 
 ably working for farmers in the neighbor- 
 hood and undoubtedly learning his trade 
 as a carpenter in Richard Berry's blacksmith 
 and carpenter shop. The records show that 
 AAordecai, as oldest son and heir, sold the 
 Long Run farm in 1797 and the Licking 
 
River farm in 1808. The final disposition of 
 the other land has not been determined. 
 Thomas Lincoln's name appears in the 
 Washington County tax list of June 24, 
 1795, as a male between 16 and 21 years 
 of age and without taxable property. When 
 he was 17 (1795) he served in the Wash- 
 ington County militia for sixty days, his 
 first recorded public service. 
 
 Thomas lived with his father's cousin, 
 Hannaniah Lincoln, at Elizabethtown in 
 Hardin County, Kentucky, from May, 1796, 
 until at least in September of 1797, work- 
 ing as a laborer for Samuel Haycraft and 
 perhaps other men. He spent the year 
 1798 with his uncle, Isaac Lincoln, on the 
 Wautauga in eastern Tennessee. Then he 
 returned to his mother's home in Wash- 
 ington County, Kentucky, where he lived 
 (according to the tax lists) from 1799 to 
 1802. When he was 24 years of age he 
 moved to Hardin County in Kentucky. It 
 was these years— from 1795 to 1803— that 
 earned him his son Abraham's description 
 of "a wandering laboring boy." 
 
 Thomas Lincoln lived in Hardin County 
 from 1802 to 1816. He seems to have 
 found himself there. During this time he 
 purchased three farms in Hardin County 
 and two city lots in Elizabethtown. On June 
 12, 1806, he married his first wife, Nancy 
 Hanks, by whom he had three children, 
 the second of whom became the sixteenth 
 
 10 
 
President of the United States. 
 
 Thomas Lincoln met Nancy Hanks when 
 she was living with her aunt and uncle, 
 Elizabeth and Thomas Sparrow, in Hardin 
 County. Nancy, 22 years of age, tall, well 
 proportioned, had dark skin and eyes, a 
 high forehad, a good command of lang- 
 uage. She was a skilled seamstress and, 
 when there was a wedding or a funeral, 
 might be engaged in a home for a week 
 or two at a time. Working for wages in 
 families that were growing rich, she was 
 not regarded as a servant but sat at table 
 with the family. Thomas at this time was 
 26 years of age, of medium height and 
 solidly built. His hair was such a dark 
 shade of brown that it looked black, and 
 he wore it cut straight around on a level 
 with the bottom of his ears, not shingled 
 up the back. His gray eyes twinkled. Nancy 
 had been born in Virginia, but her mother 
 and her mother's family had moved to 
 Kentucky when she was a small child. The 
 courtship of Tom and Nancy progressed 
 in a satisfactory way and, when she went 
 to Washington County to do some sewing 
 for her friend Polly Berry, Tom found it 
 necessary to visit his two brothers still liv- 
 ing in that county. The Richard Berrys of- 
 fered their house for the wedding, and so 
 it was held there— rather than in Hardin 
 County where Nancy had been living with 
 her relatives. 
 
 11 
 
The Reverend Jesse Head married 
 Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks. It was 
 a grand wedding. The Berrys were well to 
 do; there was no lack of help nor of 
 guests; nor was the wedding feast a mat- 
 ter of light refreshments; it was a splendid 
 barbecue. And they went to live in Eliza- 
 bethtown, county seat of Hardin County. 
 
 Thomas served the public while living 
 in Hardin County in various ways; he 
 guarded prisoners, in one instance putting 
 in six days of guard duty for which he re- 
 ceived one pound seven shillings. Jury 
 duty then was limited to land owners, and 
 Thomas was given jury duty almost as 
 soon as he made his first purchase of land. 
 He also received an appointment as a 
 "patroller" of Hardin County roads; this 
 entailed guarding the peaceful traveler 
 against highwaymen and thugs, and mak- 
 ing certain that all slaves using the roads 
 had the express permission of their mas- 
 ters. He also was appointed by the court as 
 one of four appraisers of the property of a 
 neighbor who had died. He also was 
 named road surveyor, a duty similar to that 
 of our present day township road commis- 
 sioner. 
 
 In summary, he served in a public 
 capacity on seventeen occasions during 
 the fourteen years of his continuous resi- 
 dence in Hardin County, all appointive 
 assignments. His public duties were not 
 
 12 
 
those requiring a man of much schooling, 
 but they did call for a man of honesty and 
 reliability, a man well regarded in his com- 
 munity. 
 
 Thomas never was a large scale land 
 owner. However, the Hardin County tax 
 list for 1814 showed Lincoln with prop- 
 erty assessed for taxation valued at $510. 
 This ranked him as 15th in property value 
 for tax purposes among the 98 taxpayers 
 listed. Most significant is the fact that 
 Thomas Lincoln's name never appeared on 
 any list of delinquent tax payers. 
 
 In the spring of 1806, just before he 
 was married to Nancy Hanks, Thomas Lin- 
 coln made a business trip with Isaac Bush 
 (the son of a well to do landowner and 
 leading citizen of E-town). They took a 
 flatboat loaded with produce owned by 
 the Bleakley and Montgomery store in 
 Elizabethtown down the Mississippi, to be 
 sold in New Orleans on commission. His 
 commission amounted to sixteen pounds 
 and ten shillings, which was credited to his 
 account at the store. At the same time he 
 was credited with nearly fourteen pounds 
 in gold, from which it would appear that 
 he did some trading on his own account. 
 Maybe some part of the flatboat cargo was 
 farm produce raised on his Mill Creek farm. 
 
 The Thomas Lincolns had three children 
 born in Kentucky: Sarah in 1807 in Eliza- 
 bethtown, Abraham in February, 1809, on 
 
 13 
 
the Sinking Spring farm to which they 
 moved probably in December of 1808, and 
 Tommy, born in 1811, who died in infancy. 
 The cabin on this farm in which Abraham 
 Lincoln was born has been preserved in 
 a marble building, and tourists from all 
 over the world make the pilgrimage to his 
 birthplace near Hodgenville, Kentucky. 
 
 Thomas joined the Little Mount Separate 
 Baptist Church in Hardin County, Kentucky 
 in 1816, the year the family moved to In- 
 diana. This church was anti-slavery. This 
 suggests that Thomas was opposed to 
 slavery, and perhaps is the basis of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln's statement that his father 
 moved to Indiana "partly on account of 
 slavery". President Lincoln's statement in 
 1864 that "if slavery is not wrong, noth- 
 ing is wrong. I can not remember when I 
 did not so think and feel" leads us to con- 
 clude that the atmosphere of his childhood 
 home in Kentucky had been critical of 
 slavery. 
 
 Difficulty with Kentucky land titles, 
 however, was the chief cause for the move 
 to Indiana in December, 1816. A surveyor's 
 error cost Thomas 38 acres (and 18 pounds) 
 when he sold his Mill Creek farm in 1814. 
 His title to his 300 acre Sinking Spring 
 farm was defective, and he lost the land— 
 although the court did order Isaac Bush, 
 who sold it to him, to refund the $200 
 purchase price. His Knob Creek farm, 
 
 14 
 
shown as 30 acres on the 1815 tax list giv- 
 ing Thomas Lincoln as the owner, also was 
 the subject of litigation which was still 
 unsettled when the discouraged Thomas 
 left for Indiana. There is no record of any 
 suits involving titles to the land which he 
 purchased in Indiana and in Illinois, so he 
 did get away from this irritation. 
 
 Life In Indiana 
 
 In the autumn of 1816 Thomas made a 
 trip to Indiana to select a home place for 
 his family. The Lincoln family reached the 
 Indiana land that Thomas had picked out 
 on Pigeon Creek in December, 1816; but 
 it was not until the following October, 
 1817, that he went to the land office in 
 Vincennes and "entered" 160 acres, and 
 made a down payment. In other words, 
 he "squatted" on the land for nine months. 
 He entered this land under the terms of 
 the public land law of 1804 which fixed a 
 price of $2.00 per acre and a minimum 
 entry of 160 acres, with a provision for 
 credit. Lincoln finally kept only 80 acres 
 of this land, and completed his payment 
 of $160 in 1827. He was allowed to re- 
 duce the amount of land to 80 acres un- 
 der the terms of the federal public land 
 "relief" act of 1821. 
 
 A. J. Beveridge in his Abraham Lin- 
 coln, 1809-1858 says of the new land to 
 which Thomas brought his family: 
 
 15 
 
Indiana is a vast forest . . . just pene- 
 trated in places by backwoods set- 
 tlers who are half hunters, half 
 farmers. . . . Fewer people had pene- 
 trated this section than any other 
 part of the southern quarter of the 
 new State — hardly more than one 
 adult white man to every four square 
 miles and, counting women and chil- 
 dren and youths under twenty-one, 
 a little over one human being to each 
 square mile . . . Upon a knoll sur- 
 rounded by marshy land ... he de- 
 cided to start life anew. 
 
 Nancy Hanks Lincoln died in their 
 Spencer County home in Indiana on Octo- 
 ber 5, 1818, a victim of the dread "milk 
 sick" that ravaged the Pigeon Creek neigh- 
 borhood. Cows ate the foliage of the poi- 
 sonous white snake root weed, and those 
 who drank their milk contracted the "milk 
 sick". When Nancy died, Sarah was 1 1 and 
 Abraham was 9 years old. Just before 
 Nancy died, her uncle and aunt, Thomas 
 and Elizabeth Sparrow, who had raised 
 her and who had followed the Thomas 
 Lincolns to Indiana, also died from the same 
 dread disease. In the fourteen months thai 
 followed Nancy's death, Thomas, Dennis 
 Hanks (Nancy's cousin who lived with 
 them) and the two children must have 
 had a rugged time. Little Sarah did the 
 cooking. The food of the pioneers was 
 mostly flesh with some corn or wheat 
 broken in stump mortars; (tree stumps 
 were used for this purpose.) The cooking 
 
 16 
 
was poor, frying in grease being the favor- 
 ite method. The clothing of the four of 
 them must have been in a bad way with no 
 feminine hand to clean, patch or renew it. 
 
 Pioneer widows and widowers remar- 
 ried promptly, especially those who had 
 small children. In the society of the time 
 a man was needed to protect as well as 
 support the family, but a woman was need- 
 ed to keep the family together and make 
 a home of a pioneer cabin. So Thomas went 
 back to Elizabethtown in December, 1819, 
 and married a former friend of his— Mrs. 
 Sarah Bush Johnston. Sarah had been a 
 widow for three years, and had three 
 children: Elizabeth aged 12, Matilda aged 
 10, and John aged 9 years. Tom paid off 
 her debts; and brought her and the chil- 
 dren back to Pigeon Creek with all her be- 
 longings in a borrowed wagon. At the 
 time of her marriage, Sarah Johnston was 
 a very tall, strong woman, straight as an 
 Indian, with pink cheeks, steady gray-blue 
 eyes, and a very kindly expression. The 
 new mother was blessed with energy and 
 sense; she was a good housekeeper with 
 a passion for cleanliness. The children were 
 washed and combed and mended; the 
 whole place was cleaned up; the fire-place 
 and the furniture were overhauled. The 
 change was so pronounced that, nearly 
 thirty-five years afterward, Abraham re- 
 membered and described it. 
 
 17 
 
The original Goosenest Prairie cabin of lie 
 
 1892. 
 
mas and Sarah Lincoln. Moved to Chicago in 
 
 19 
 
Sarah proved an affectionate mother 
 to all five children. Abraham was devoted 
 to his stepmother. He told Harriet Hanks' 
 husband, A. H. Chapman, in later years, 
 that she had always encouraged him, that 
 she had been his best friend in this world, 
 and that no son could love a mother more 
 than he loved her. Mrs. Lincoln, on her 
 part, declared: "Abe was a good boy, and 
 I can say what scarcely one woman, a 
 mother, can say in a thousand . . . Abe 
 never gave me a cross word or look . . . 
 His mind and mine, what little I had, 
 seemed to run together— move in the same 
 channel". 
 
 The "Regular Baptists at Pigeon Creek" 
 had organized in 1816, but their church 
 building was not started until 1820. Local 
 tradition has it that Thomas assisted in the 
 building of the church and that the pulpit 
 is his handiwork, all of which is reasonable 
 enough since Thomas was a carpenter. He 
 got a letter from his "Little Mount Separate 
 Baptist Church" of Kentucky, and joined 
 the "Regular Baptists" in 1823. Although 
 Tom joined the congregation by letter, his 
 second wife Sarah had joined by "experi- 
 ence" which meant that she was a convert. 
 Thomas took a very active part in church 
 affairs which we may trace through en- 
 tries in the Minute Book of Pigeon Creek 
 Church (now in the State Historial Library at 
 Springfield, Illinois). He served as a dele- 
 
 20 
 
gate to a church conference, and on sev- 
 eral occasions was appointed to the church 
 discipline committee. He became a trustee. 
 The minute book shows that in 1827 he 
 pledged 24 pounds of cornmeal to the 
 church. When they moved to Illinois in the 
 winter of 1829-1830, he asked for a letter 
 of "dismission" for himself and wife, which 
 he probably used in Coles County, Illinois. 
 
 In Coles County, Illinois, Thomas and 
 his wife attended a church of the Discip- 
 les of Christ, possibly because there was 
 no Baptist congregation in their neighbor- 
 hood. Regardless of the particular denomi- 
 nation that Thomas favored, it is clear that 
 his son Abraham was reared in a Christian 
 home. Dennis Hanks said that Thomas Lin- 
 coln acquired a family Bible early in their 
 Indiana residence. The family record taken 
 from this Bible is now in the Illinois State 
 Historical Library. We also know that a 
 beautiful grace was said at every meal in 
 their home: "Fit and prepare us for life's 
 humblest service, for Christ's sake, Amen". 
 
 By 1824 Lincoln and Hanks had cleared 
 enough land so that they had about 10 
 acres of corn, 5 acres of wheat, 2 acres of 
 oats, and one acre of meadow. They raised 
 sheep and cattle, but realized very little 
 on them. Cows and calves were worth only 
 six dollars, corn ten cents, wheat 25 cents 
 at the time. Abraham worked for other 
 farmers to help augment the family income. 
 
 21 
 
In January, 1828, Thomas' only daughter 
 Sarah, who had married Aaron Grigsby in 
 1826, died in childbirth. The Grigsbys, 
 according to Beveridge, were of the aristoc- 
 racy of the backwoods. Abraham Lincoln, 
 however, blamed his sister's death on neg- 
 lect by the Grigsby family, and hard feel- 
 ings prevailed between the two families. 
 
 There is no record of any public service 
 performed by Thomas during his stay in 
 Indiana. Rockport, the county seat of Spen- 
 cer County, Indiana, was 19 miles from the 
 Lincoln farm, and probably Thomas was 
 not as well known there as he had been 
 in the county seat at Elizabethtown, Ken- 
 tucky, and vicinity, where he had spent a 
 good part of his young life. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, Thomas 7 son, grew 
 up and matured in Indiana. He was seven 
 years old in 1816 when they reached 
 Pigeon Creek, and 21 years of age when 
 they left Indiana. Beveridge paints a vivid 
 picture of pioneer life in Indiana. He says 
 the people were very ignorant, rough man- 
 nered, and superstitious. The cabins of 
 these wood folk were often ill-kept, dirty 
 in the extreme, infested with vermin. There 
 was no sanitation; bathing or washing the 
 body in any way was seldom attempted— 
 except, of course, during "swimming time". 
 It is hard to see how, from December to 
 March, the clothes they wore could have 
 been washed. A well educated and care- 
 
 22 
 
fully reared New England woman came to 
 live in Indiana in 1822. She records that she 
 couldn't wash clothes oftener than every 
 three months. The cabins were packed 
 with people: husband, wife, children, 
 guests, relatives and hired men all lived 
 in a single room, cooking, eating, sleeping 
 there. Sometimes a loft relieved the con- 
 gestion. False shame or delicacy did not 
 exist. Incredible quantities of whiskey were 
 consumed, everybody (including women 
 and preachers) drinking the fiery liquid. 
 Whiskey, as well as bread and meat, was 
 a common necessity. All used tobacco- 
 chewing, smoking, snuffing; and corn cob 
 pipes in the mouths of women was a not 
 uncommon sight. Fighting and profanity 
 were general. 
 
 And Abraham Lincoln's formative 
 years were spent in this environment. Some 
 of it stuck to him, but not all. He didn't 
 like hunting and fishing; he didn't really 
 like to work. It has been reported that 
 he said his father taught him to work, but 
 never to like it. He always wanted to read. 
 He would walk miles to get a book, and 
 he always wanted to talk about what he 
 had read. He began to make speeches as 
 early as his fifteenth year, to anyone who 
 would listen. He seldom touched liquor in 
 an age where everybody drank too much. 
 He never fell into the habit of profanity, 
 though as an adult he had a great reputa- 
 
 23 
 
tion for his "off color" stories. 
 
 Abe's formal schooling, totaling less 
 than one year, amounted to a few weeks 
 in 1815 and another short term in 1816 in 
 Kentucky. In Indiana there was a sub- 
 scription school opened in 1820 by one 
 Andrew Crawford, and Abe attended this 
 as well as two other schools in the neigh- 
 borhood in 1824 and 1826. His stepsister, 
 Matilda Johnston, and his cousin Dennis 
 Hanks agreed that Abe liked learning 
 much more than physical labor: "active and 
 persistent in learning; read everything he 
 could; ciphered on boards, on the walls". 
 Abraham Lincoln, himself, told a friend in 
 
 1853: 
 
 My father had suffered greatly for 
 the want of an education, and he de- 
 termined at an early day that I 
 should be well educated. And what do 
 you think he said his ideas of a good 
 education were? We had an old dog- 
 eared arithmetic in our house, and 
 Father determined that somehow, or 
 somehow elss, I should cipher clear 
 through that book. 
 
 His stepmother said in 1865: 
 
 As a usual thing Mr. Lincoln never 
 made Abe quit reading to do any- 
 thing if he could avoid it. He would 
 do it himself first ... he wanted, as 
 he himself felt the uses and neces- 
 sities of education, his boy Abraham 
 to learn; and he encouraged him to 
 do it in all ways he could. 
 
 24 
 
Beveridge says that Abe haunted the 
 law courts of his neighborhood, and bor- 
 rowed books from the various lawyers of 
 his acquaintance. Business before the courts 
 at the county seat consisted mostly of 
 criminal and divorce cases: stealing of log 
 chains, hog stealing, slander, assult, libel, 
 murder, malpractice, but not many cases 
 of debt. Lincoln listened to this, took it all 
 in. 
 
 The family moves to Illinois 
 
 In the autumn of 1829, Thomas Lincoln 
 resolved to leave Indiana for Illinois. Den- 
 nis Hanks' cousin, John Hanks, had gone to 
 Macon County, Illinois, and sent back the 
 usual glowing reports of the new country. 
 Also in Indiana the "milk sick" threatened 
 again. So Thomas and Sarah Lincoln went to 
 Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and sold Sarah's 
 lot for $123.00. Tom then sold his 80 acres 
 in Indiana to his neighbor Charles Grigsby 
 for $125.00, his corn at ten cents a bushel, 
 and his hogs to another neighbor. The 
 party which left on March first of 1830 
 consisted of 
 
 Thomas Lincoln, aged 52 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, aged 21, the one 
 remaining child of Nancy Lin- 
 coln 
 
 Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln, aged 
 41, Thomas' second wife and 
 Abe's stepmother 
 
 Sarah's daughter Sarah Elizabeth 
 
 25 
 
Hanks, aged 22, who had mar- 
 ried 
 
 Dennis Hanks, aged 31, in 1821; and 
 their four children 
 Sarah Jane, aged 8 
 John Talbot, aged 7 
 Nancy, aged 6 
 Harriet, aged 4 
 
 Another daughter of Sarah's, Matil- 
 da Hall, aged 20, who had mar- 
 ried Squire Hall, aged about 25 
 (he was half brother of Dennis 
 Hanks) and their baby son John, 
 aged 11 months 
 
 Sarah's youngest child, John D. 
 Johnston, then aged 19 
 
 a total of 13 persons. Through the forest 
 they made their way to Vincennes, In- 
 diana. Their crossing of the Wabash River 
 is now commemorated by a beautiful 
 bronze and marble plaque on the Illinois 
 side of the river. They pushed on towards 
 their destination which was a farm on the 
 Sangamon River in Macon County, near 
 the present city of Decatur. The ground 
 hadn't thawed out yet so the ox teams 
 were able to make better time than would 
 have been possible a few weeks later. 
 The trip took about two weeks. It is tradi- 
 tion that they stopped in Coles County, 
 Illinois, to see relatives (the Radleys and the 
 Sawyers) on their way to Macon County. 
 
 Thomas Lincoln arrived in Illinois with 
 a wagon, a team of oxen, a horse, a mini- 
 mum amount of furniture— which included 
 three beds, bedding, one bureau, one 
 
 26 
 
table, one clothes closet, one set of chairs, 
 a few cooking utensils, an axe, a rifle. 
 Beveridge says that the furniture list is 
 almost the same as that which Mrs. Sarah 
 Bush Johnston brought to Indiana on the 
 occasion of her marriage to Thomas. He 
 had some cash left from the sale of the 
 two pieces of property, after the purchase 
 of the wagon and the oxen and the sup- 
 plies for the trip. 
 
 Bad luck stalked the Thomas Lincoln 
 party. "Ague" and fever or malaria was a 
 common affliction of early settlers in Illi- 
 nois, and the Lincoln-Hanks-Hall families 
 suffered from it in the fall of 1830. How- 
 ever, fifteen acres were broken, and Abra- 
 ham helped cut trees and split rails to fence 
 it. This was followed by an unusually 
 severe winter, long remembered as the 
 "winter of the deep snow". Beveridge 
 talks of the "thick white smother" that 
 during the winter of 1830-1831 concealed 
 afl Illinois. It started to snow on Christmas 
 Day, and fell steadily during most of the 
 winter. Nobody ventured beyond their 
 cabin except for firewood. The snow drift- 
 ed to 15 feet on the prairie. The cold was 
 intense, often ten to twenty degrees below 
 zero. And in the spring the creeks and 
 rivers overflowed, and the whole land was 
 covered with water. 
 
 That was enough for Thomas Lincoln, 
 Squire Hall and Dennis Hanks. Packing up 
 
 27 
 
their wives, children and furniture, they 
 started back east in the spring of 1831. 
 Retracing their steps of the year before, 
 they came to Coles County. Tradition has 
 it that the Sawyers of Coles County (rela- 
 tives of Mrs. Sarah Lincoln) persuaded the 
 party to stop and try that neighborhood. 
 So Thomas "squatted" on a 40-acre tract of 
 land in the so-called Buck Grove neighbor- 
 hood, which is near the northwest corner 
 of the present Pleasant Grove township. 
 Probably unable at first to make up his 
 mind to stay in Illinois, he remained on this 
 piece of land until the spring of 1834. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln did not go with his 
 father to Coles County at this time. With 
 two other men he took a flat boat down 
 to New Orleans for Denton Offut, carrying 
 a load of provisions. Down the Sangamon, 
 via the Illinois, and on to the Mississippi, 
 they made a successful trip. Abe then did 
 go to Coles County to see his family be- 
 fore settling down in New Salem, Illinois, 
 where he kept store for Denton Offut. He 
 proved to be a good clerk. 
 
 Thomas Lincoln's age (53 years) when 
 he arrived in Coles County, Illinois, obvi- 
 ously precluded any very active partici- 
 pation in the public affairs of the commun- 
 ity. However, his stepson, John D. John- 
 ston, served on two circuit court juries, 
 and also was a constable for eight years. 
 Dennis Hanks, son-in-law of Mrs. Sarah 
 
 28 
 
Lincoln, served on nine juries. He had 
 political ambitions, but was unsuccessful 
 three times as candidate for the office of 
 Recorder. 
 
 Thomas Lincoln was a party to six law 
 suits in Coles County. His stepson, John D. 
 Johnston, was also involved in four of 
 them and, knowing from Johnston's cor- 
 respondence with Abraham Lincoln (now in 
 the Robert Todd Lincoln collection in the 
 Congressional Library) that he was irre- 
 sponsible to say the least, one is tempted 
 to assume that the basis for much of 
 Thomas 7 financial embarrassment was his 
 willingness to sign notes with Johnston. 
 When Johnston failed to pay, the liability 
 fell on Thomas. These law suits are all 
 dated within a nine year period when John- 
 ston's family, and of course his obligations, 
 were growing rapidly. A case in point is 
 the suit regarding a mill for which Thomas 
 Lincoln, John D. Johnston, Dennis Hanks, 
 Squire Hall, and one William AAoffett signed 
 a lease in 1835 by which they were 
 obligated to pay $220.12% at the end of a 
 year. When the year was up only $85.25 
 had been paid, and of that $50 was ac- 
 counted for by repairs to the mill (repairs 
 by carpenter Lincoln?) Three months later, 
 the owners brought suit and won a judg- 
 ment of $138.67 from Lincoln, Johnston, 
 Hanks and Hall (AAoffett having disap- 
 peared). 
 
 29 
 
The story of Thomas Lincoln's land 
 transactions is more cheerful. We have al- 
 ready seen that he "squatted" on the Buck 
 Grove farm from the time he came to Coles 
 County in 1831 until 1834. Between 1834 
 and 1837 he bought 200 acres of land in 
 three separate deals in Coles County for a 
 total of $275.00. In 1837 he sold 120 
 acres of this land in two separate deals for 
 a total of $362.50. This was pretty good 
 trading. Not only did he make a cash prof- 
 it of $87.50 but he owned, free and clear, 
 the 80 acre farm in Goose Nest Prairie on 
 which he lived. 
 
 The story of the "Abraham forty" is as 
 follows: In 1840 Thomas bought for $50 
 forty acres of land adjoining his Goose 
 Nest Prairie farm on the east. In 1841, his 
 son Abraham, gave him $200 for this 40- 
 acre tract, and took a deed for it, stipulat- 
 ing in the deed that Thomas and his wife 
 Sarah should have a life interest in it— thus 
 insuring his father and mother a home as 
 long as they should live. Abraham was well 
 aware of Thomas 7 generosity and of his 
 stepbrother John's improvidence. 
 
 In making his four land purchases in 
 Coles County, Thomas had to resort to a 
 mortgage in only two cases: he borrowed 
 $102 in 1834 on the 80-acre "Plummer 
 Place" which was repaid in 1838, after he 
 had sold it to Daniel P. Needham. In 1842 
 he borrowed $50 on the east 40 acres of 
 
 30 
 
his 80-acre farm. The records do not show 
 when this was repaid. Thomas Lincoln's 
 land deals apparently were made for the 
 purpose of acquiring a home for himself 
 and his wife Sarah for their old age, and in 
 this he succeeded. He left no unpaid debts 
 or taxes in either Kentucky or in Indiana, 
 nor in Illinois did Thomas Lincoln's name 
 appear on any delinquent tax list, nor is 
 there any record of unpaid debts or judg- 
 ments. And he did farm his land. In a letter 
 to his son in 1848 he said: "We have razed 
 this summer as much as 50 bushels of corne 
 to the acar, and our wheat was very good/' 
 That Abraham Lincoln, a rising young 
 lawyer in Springfield, should occasionally 
 help his father was only natural. We have 
 a record of four cases of financial assist- 
 ance: 
 
 (1) The $200 he gave his father for 
 the "Abraham forty" 
 
 (2) The assignment of a $35 legal 
 fee to his father in the case of 
 Thomas McKibben vs. Jonathan 
 Hart, trial held at Charleston 
 
 (3) The assignment of four legal 
 fees in the cases of Levi Watson 
 vs. James Gill, Robert Matson 
 vs. Hiram Rutherford, and two 
 others 
 
 (4) Thomas asked Abraham for $20 
 in 1848 when Abraham was a 
 Member of Congress at Wash- 
 ington; and received it 
 
 There is a tradition in the Sawyer family 
 
 31 
 
that Abraham sent his stepmother ten dol- 
 lars a month. A. H. Chapman said that Lin- 
 coln gave his mother $50 when in Charles- 
 ton for the Lincoln-Douglas debate in 1858. 
 Jesse Weik, Herndon's co-author, reported 
 that Lincoln left his stepmother "a generous 
 sum of money to lighten the burden of her 
 declining years and thus insure her every 
 comfort" when he last came to see her in 
 1861. There was probably a great deal of 
 assistance personally and through corre- 
 spondence, of which now there is no trace. 
 
 It is known that Abraham Lincoln was 
 in Charleston of Coles County at least six- 
 teen times during the years his father 
 lived there-1831 to 1851. It is tradition 
 that, when Abe's business in Charleston 
 was finished, he would fill up a rented or 
 borrowed buggy with good things for the 
 folks at Goose Nest Prairie, and drive the 
 eight miles to see them. We are fairly cer- 
 tain, too, that the father never visited the 
 son, either in New Salem nor in Spring- 
 field, not even after Abraham was living 
 in a house of his own, beginning in May, 
 1844. Mrs. Abraham Lincoln never met 
 either Thomas or Sarah. The 100 miles be- 
 tween Charleston and Springfield was a 
 great distance to Thomas and Sarah be- 
 cause it had to be made in a buggy as the 
 railroad did not come to Coles County 
 until after Thomas' death. Nor did Thomas 
 ever see his son's children: Robert, Eddie 
 
 32 
 
and Willie. However, the Abraham Lin- 
 coln's fourth son, born in 1853, was 
 named after Thomas. The only other known 
 contact between the two families was the 
 visit to Springfield, lasting a year and a 
 half, of Mrs. Sarah Lincoln's granddaughter 
 Harriet Hanks (her mother was Elizabeth 
 Johnston Hanks) which began in 1844. 
 
 Nothing is really known of Thomas 
 Lincoln's education. He could sign his name, 
 there being sixteen signatures surviving on 
 documents. Sometimes he signed by mark. 
 Sarah Bush Lincoln said Tom could sign 
 his name and read a little, but she could 
 do neither. Mrs. Nancy Lincoln had even 
 less schooling than her husband, and had 
 to sign by mark. 
 
 Thomas Lincoln died January 17, 1851. 
 Five days before he died Abraham wrote to 
 his stepbrother that, because Mary had just 
 had another baby and was still in bed, he 
 could not come, but he said: 
 
 I sincerely hope that Father may yet 
 recover his health; but at all events 
 tell him to call upon, and confide in 
 our great and good and merciful 
 Maker; who will not turn away 
 from him in any extremity . . . Say 
 to him ... if it be his lot to go now, 
 he will soon have a joyous meeting 
 with many loved ones gone before; 
 and where the rest of us, through the 
 help of God, hope ere-long to join 
 them. 
 
 33 
 
This letter throws an interesting light on 
 Abraham's own ideas of immortality. Sarah 
 Lincoln died in 1869, and Thomas and 
 Sarah are buried in the Shiloh or Gordon 
 cemetery, a mile and a half west of their 
 Goose Nest Prairie home. 
 
 Beveridge says there is unanimous and 
 positive testimony as to the placid char- 
 acter of Thomas Lincoln. Dennis Hanks de- 
 scribed him as "a good humored, sociable 
 man who took the world easy, loving 
 everybody and everything". David C. 
 Mearns in his The Lincoln Papers says that 
 one William Green described Thomas as 
 the "cleverest homespun man I ever saw" 
 and that "he could tell more good anec- 
 dotes than his son Abraham". There is a 
 story extant that Thomas was grubbing up 
 bushes on his farm, and a neighbor said to 
 him, "I thought you told me that you want- 
 ed to sell your farm?" Thomas replied, 
 "And so I do, but I haint agoin' to let my 
 farm know it". Mrs. Sarah Lincoln has testi- 
 fied that he was kind and loving, always 
 paid his way, and never turned a dog from 
 his door. A neighbor, Mrs. Andrew Allison, 
 said of Thomas Lincoln: "A harder working 
 man than Thomas Lincoln never lived, but 
 he was a poor manager". C. H. Coleman in 
 his book Abraham Lincoln and Coles Coun- 
 ty, Illinois is inclined to agree with an esti- 
 mate of Thomas Lincoln made by Sarah's 
 granddaughter, Mrs. Sarah Jane Dowling. 
 
 34 
 
She told in an interview that: 
 
 Thomas Lincoln made a good living 
 and I reckon he would have got some- 
 thing ahead if he hadn't been so 
 generous. He had the old Virginia 
 notion of hospitality, liked to see 
 people sit up to the table and eat 
 hearty, and there were always 
 plenty of his relatives and Grand- 
 mother's willing to live on him. 
 Uncle Abe got his honesty and his 
 clean notions of living and his kind 
 heart from his father. 
 
 In Coles County tradition has it that 
 he worked as a carpenter when farm work 
 was slack. He is said to have assisted David 
 Dryden in the building of a frame house, 
 and also worked with Dryden in his black 
 smith shop. 
 
 Thomas Lincoln was an honest man, 
 and a temperate one. He differed little from 
 his neighbors in Kentucky, Indiana and Illi- 
 nois. His sole claim to our attention is be- 
 cause of his son. 
 
 LINCOLN LOG CABIN STATE PARK 
 Coles County, Illinois 
 
 This was the home of Thomas and Sarah 
 Bush Lincoln, father and stepmother of 
 Abraham Lincoln. The Park was dedicated 
 in 1936. The cabin is an accurate reproduc- 
 tion of the original, which disappeared 
 after being exhibited at the Chicago 
 
 35 
 
World's Fair in 1893. The east part of the 
 double cabin probably was built in 1837 
 by Thomas Lincoln and his stepson, John 
 D. Johnston, on the 40 acres east of the 
 present location. In 1840 Thomas Lincoln 
 acquired his 80-acre farm (now included in 
 the 86-acre State Park) from Reuben 
 Moore, a neighbor. He built a new cabin, 
 and moved the earlier cabin to it to make 
 a double cabin. He lived here with his 
 wife, Sarah, until his death. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln's last visit to Coles 
 County was on January 31, 1861, when he 
 came to say good-bye to his stepmother be- 
 fore leaving Illinois for Washington and 
 the White House. Mrs. Lincoln at that time 
 was staying with her daughter, Mrs. Matil- 
 da Moore, at the nearby village of Farm- 
 ington or Campbell. The neighbors enter- 
 tained Abraham Lincoln at this time with 
 a big dinner in the Moore House. This 
 house is owned by the State of Illinois, and 
 is open to the public on week ends during 
 the tourist season. 
 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 973.7L63C2C677T COM 
 
 THOMAS LINCOLN CHARLESTON, ILL.? 
 
 3 01 
 
 2 031802033