973.7L33 
 C2W253ii 
 
 Warren, Louis Austin. 
 
 Lincolns and 
 LaFollettes 
 Kinsfolk. 
 
 were they 
 
LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
A2 
 
 LIMCOLNS AND 
 LAFOLLETTES 
 
 Were They Kinsfolk? 
 
 By 
 
 DR. LOUIS A. WARREN 
 
 Director of 
 
 The Lincoln 
 
 Historical Research Foundation 
 
 Compliments of 
 
 The Lincoln 
 
 National Life Insurance Company 
 
 Fort Wayne, Indiana 
 

 iO/^s 
 
 LINCOLNS AND 
 LAFOLLETTES 
 
 Were They Kinsfolk? 
 
 Abraham Lincoln and Robert M. La- 
 Foliette had many characteristics in 
 common which were also to be found 
 in -other statesmen who grew up in 
 what was known as "The Old North- 
 west." 
 
 Writing about his first day in Wash- 
 ington, LaFollette says: "Before 
 breakfast I went to Lincoln Park and 
 stood with bowed head before Ball's 
 statue of Lincoln." In after years he 
 remarked that he had never forgotten 
 the sensation of that moment. 
 
 How much more pronounced that 
 sensation would have been if La- 
 Follette had known that his own 
 grandfather and the father of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln were close neighbors, 
 during the Kentucky days, and pos- 
 sibly related to each other through 
 marriage. 
 
 . While making researches in Ken- 
 tucky, the editor of Lincoln Lore came 
 across a coincident that is of more 
 than passing interest. From the early 
 court records of Hardin County it was 
 discovered that the Lincoln and La- 
 Follette families were both driven 
 from the same original land survey by 
 the same ejectment suit. 
 
 In the month of January, 1815, ten 
 families who had settled on a ten 
 thousand acre tract of land on Knob 
 Creek in what was then Hardin 
 County, now LaRue, found themselves 
 in litigation over their land titles. Suit 
 
had been brought against them by the 
 heirs of Thomas Middleton of Phila- 
 delphia, who claimed a prior right to 
 the land. Among the men who had 
 been made defendants in this suit 
 were Thomas Lincoln, Jesse LaFol- 
 lette, and Isaac LaFollette. Jesse La- 
 Follette was the grandfather of Rob- 
 ert M. LaFollette. 
 
 It was decided by the court to make 
 the Thomas Lincoln case a test case 
 and it was to be tried first. On the 
 first day of January, 1815, Lincoln re- 
 ceived a New Year's gift in the form 
 of a document which read like this: 
 
 "Mr. Thomas Lincoln, Tenant in 
 Possession. You will perceive by the 
 foregoing declaration in ejectment 
 that I am sued for the premises men- 
 tioned or some part of them they be- 
 ing in your possession to whieh I have 
 no claim or title. If therefore you 
 have any claim thereto and intend to 
 defend it you must appear at the 
 court house at Elizabethtown on the 
 first day of our next March term of 
 the Hardin Circuit Court and make 
 your defense otherwise I shall suffer 
 judgment to pass against me by de- 
 fault and you will be turned out of 
 possession. Your loving friend Richard 
 Roe," 
 
 When the ten defendants met at 
 Elizabethtown and talked over the 
 plans for fighting the case, there were 
 two of the number, Thomas Lincoln 
 and Jesse LaFollette, who were not 
 very enthusiastic, evidently, in going 
 into a long period of litigation. The 
 father of Abraham Lincoln and the 
 grandfather of Robert M. LaFollette 
 were through for all time with Ken- 
 tucky land holdings and long before 
 
this Middleton ejectment suit was 
 settled both men had moved their 
 families to Indiana. 
 
 The Lincolns settled in what was 
 then Perry County, Indiana, and the 
 LaFollettes located in the adjacent 
 county of Harrison. Both families 
 eventually moved farther west, the 
 Lincolns to Illinois and the LaFol- 
 lettes to Wisconsin. 
 
 It is possible that there is a closer 
 relation between these two families 
 than the community contact. The 
 grandmother of Abraham Lincoln and 
 the grandmother of Robert M. La- 
 Follette on the maternal side were 
 both Lees, if it can be maintained that 
 Nancy Hanks Lincoln was the child of 
 either a son or a daughter of the Jo- 
 seph Hanks who married Nancy Lee. 
 
 Jesse LaFollette, grandfather of 
 Robert M. LaFollette, married Mary 
 (Polly) Lee, January 25, 1808, in Har- 
 din County. A brother of Jesse, Uzal 
 LaFollette, was already married to a 
 Nancy Lee, and Jesse's oldest sister, 
 Mary LaFollette, was the wife of 
 John Lee. It is not difficult to asso- 
 ciate the Lees with the LaFollettes. 
 
 It is also possible to show that this 
 same Lee family into which the La- 
 Follettes had married were closely 
 associated with Joseph Hanks, who 
 had married a Nancy Lee and who 
 was a close neighbor of the LaFol- 
 lettes. 
 
 On February 28, 1787, a John Lee 
 sold to Joseph Hanks one hundred and 
 fifty acres of land, a part of the same 
 tract on which Lee was then living. 
 Joseph Hanks died on this same farm 
 in 1793. The John Lee from whom 
 Hanks had purchased the property 
 
had passed away in 1788, and Eliza- 
 beth Lee, probably his widow, was 
 made executor of the estate. Joseph 
 Barnett, the original owner of both 
 the Lee and Hanks farms, gave a note 
 to John Lee Jr., in 1794 which was 
 witnessed by Charles Lee and William 
 Hanks. William was a son of Joseph 
 Hanks. 
 
 Charles Lee died in 1796 and Jo- 
 seph LaFollette, father of Jesse, and 
 great grandfather of Robert M. La- 
 Follette, was appointed one of the ap- 
 praisers of his estate. The original 
 settlements of the Lees, Hankses and 
 LaFollettes, and later the home of 
 Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, 
 were . in the Knob Creek community, 
 embracing parts of the old Nelson and 
 Hardin counties. It would appear that 
 there was some relation at least be- 
 tween John Lee and Nancy Lee 
 Hanks, and we are positive that the 
 descendants of John Lee married into 
 the LaFollette family. 
 
 It is a pure assumption, however, 
 to claim that this Lee family was re- 
 lated to the family of Robert E. Lee, 
 although long before Mr. E. Carter 
 Delano discovered the interesting 
 records of Joseph Hanks in Richmond 
 County, Virginia, which were given 
 such" wide publicity by the late Dr. 
 Barton, the relatives of Nancy Hanks 
 were claiming this relationship. 
 
 Inasmuch as an illustrious man will 
 immediately be claimed by every fam- 
 ily bearing the same name, the writer 
 did not pay much attention to the 
 claim in some Hanks letters in his 
 possession, that the president's 
 mother, was a relative of Robert E. 
 Lee. , He was interested in observing 
 
however, that the descendants of Jo- 
 seph Hanks agreed that his wife was 
 a Lee. 
 
 On February 25, 1895, Mrs. M. A. 
 Wilson, of Cannon City, Colorado, a 
 great grand - daughter of Joseph 
 Hanks, wrote a letter to Mrs. Caro- 
 line Hanks Hitchcock of Cambridge, 
 Massachusetts, from which this ex- 
 cerpt is taken: 
 
 "The mother of Joseph Hanks (son 
 of Joseph Hanks Sr., already men- 
 tioned) was a Lucy Lee of Virginia, 
 a relative of Robert E. Lee." 
 
 On this same subject Mrs. Wilson 
 wrote Mrs. Hitchcock again on 
 March 13 of the same year, after hav- 
 ing interviewed one of the older mem- 
 bers of the family: 
 
 "But about the given name of the 
 mother of Joseph Hanks (Jr.) she is 
 not certain, having obtained that in- 
 formation recently from my father's 
 sister. He told her himself that his 
 mother was a Lee but she does not re- 
 member whether he said the name 
 was Nancy or Lucy." 
 
 This correspondence took place 
 nearly thirty-five years before the re- 
 cent discovery of the Richmond Coun- 
 ty records by Mr. Delano. 
 
 The most difficult task, however, in 
 connecting the grandmother of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln and the grandmother of 
 Robert M. LaFollette is the lack of 
 positive evidence about the identity of 
 the parents of Nancy Hanks Lincoln. 
 Abraham Lincoln did say that the de- 
 scendants of this Joseph Hanks were 
 his cousins, which would seem to be 
 the closest approach to the problem 
 which can be made at this time. 
 
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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 3 0112 002242953