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Show Lincoln- the First American President I ,, ,.,.,. , ,, i By ELMO SCOTT VATSON ADRAIIAJI LINCOLN, the first American President? Yes, he was! Now, that doesn't mean that an attempt is being made to upset commonly accepted history nor to deny to George Washington, who was "First in War, First in Peace and First in the Hearts of His Countrymen," the further honor, usually accorded him, of being the first chief executive of this republic. repub-lic. Put the fact is that Lincoln, not Washington, was the "first American President" and for this reason: When a child is born, its1 nationality is that of its parents, par-ents, regardless of its birthplace. birth-place. The parents of all the Presidents from Washington down to Buchanan were born before the Declaration of Independence In-dependence was signed and were therefore British subjects, sub-jects, even though they were born in America, Lincoln's father and mother were the first parents of a President born after July 4, 1776. So he was the first chief executive, execu-tive, born in the United States of AMERICAN parents and therefore he was the first REAL American President. - That characterization of Lincoln, however, is not based alone on a mere technicality in regard to the nationality of his parents. More important impor-tant is the fact that there was blended in him the strains of the two cultures which were such a vital force in the making mak-ing of America. One was from New England and the other from Virginia. It was just 300 years ago that the first of the Lincolns came to America. Samuel Lincoln was his name and he was born at Hingham in Norfolk, England, in 1619. In 1637 he emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay colony and lived there until his death in Hingham, Mass., in 1690. From this original immigrant seven T.inr-nlrnj r-nn Kia tranH in Hirppt line to the man who became President. A Migratory Family. As the years passed successive generations of the Lincolns felt that urge for a westward migration mi-gration which was such a striking strik-ing characteristic of the pioneer stock that conquered the wilderness wilder-ness of North America and did so much to build in it a new nation. Not one of the seven died in the same town in which he was born and only one died in the same state. The westward faring of the Lincolns took them from Massachusetts to New Jersey Jer-sey to Pennsylvania, to Virginia, to Kentucky, to Indiana. They came finally to Illinois from whence they sent one of their sons back East again, there to die and in the dying, as well as in. his living, to achieve immortality. im-mortality. Here is the record of those seven Lincolns: Samuel Lincoln was born in Hingham, England, in 1619 and died in Hingham, Mass., in 1690. His son Mordecai Lincoln, Sr., was born in Hingham, Mass., in 1657 and died in Scituate, Mass., in 1727. His son Mordecai Lincoln was born in Scituate, Mass., April 24, 1686, and after a residence in New Jersey died in Berks county, coun-ty, Pa., in 1736. His son John Lincoln was born in Berks county, Pa., in 1716 and . s 4- v V " ABRAHAM LINCOLN died in Virginia in 1783. His son Capt. Abraham Lincoln was born in Virginia in 1744 and died in Kentucky in 1786. His son Thomas Lincoln was born in Virginia in 1778 and died in Illinois Il-linois in 1S51. His son Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky in 1809 and died in Washington in 1S65. So much, for the moment, for New England's contribution to the "Man of the Ages." Seventeen years after the first of the Lincolns came to Mass achusetts Bay colony there arrived ar-rived in Virginia a little group of 27 persons. They had been deported de-ported from England as a punishment punish-ment that was being inflicted upon up-on Cromwell's men who were captured by the Royalists, now back in power. Among them was a man named Thomas Hanks whose origin is unknown except that the Hankses were Malmes-bury Malmes-bury men. In the American colony col-ony Thomas Hanks, through various va-rious purchases, became an important im-portant landowner in what is now Gloucester county. In the Virginia land office at Richmond are preserved some of the patents granted to Hanks and they show that he held several sev-eral hundred acres of land adjoining ad-joining the estate of a certain Col. Richard Lee, who had established es-tablished his home in Virginia 12 years before Hanks' arrival. Lee was a Royalist, one -of the foremost in Virginia in support of Charles I. and one of the first to hail Charles II as the lawful sovereign of England. And now he found himself next-plantation neighbor to Thomas Hanks, the Rebel, who had been deported from England because he had ridden with the Ironheads of Oliver Cromwell I Lincoln and Lee. How amicably the two men lived as neighbors we have no means of knowing. But we do know that the Lees and the Hankses in the years that followed, fol-lowed, intermarried. Two centuries cen-turies later two men, who claimed Col. Richard Lee as a common ancestor, found themselves them-selves arrayed against each other oth-er in a greater civil war than their forefathers had known in . I 1 ' t .- , v5' - 1 " x V i y i g- L---. ----- ' Memorial which marks the birthplace of Nancy Hanks in Mineral county, W. Va. you used it to split rails with which to fence the land you had won from those same "red devils," dev-ils," it meant that this land was going to be yours to have and to hold and to hand down to your children. So they elected the "Rail - Splitter" President and who knows how much that election elec-tion was due to the fact that in 1860 America was still frontier-minded? frontier-minded? Nearly a hundred years before that time there had been another Abraham Lincoln who might have been an even greater frontier fron-tier hero if the "red devils" had spared his life. He was Capt. Abraham Lincoln, the grandfather grandfath-er of the "Rail-Splitter," who sold his comfortable home in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in 1780. Then he started west with his wife and their five children Mordecai, aged eleven; Josiah, nine; Mary, six; Thomas, Thom-as, four; and Nancy, a baby in the strong arms of her mother, Bathsheba Lincoln. Capt. Abraham Lincoln carried with him three treasury warrants war-rants each acknowledging receipt of 160 pounds in Virginia money and each calling for 400 acres of land to be located in any county in Virginia, Kentucky Thomas Hank's patent for 530 acres adjoining land of Colonel Lee in Virginia. England. They were President Abraham Lincoln of the United States of America and Gen. Robert Rob-ert E. Lee, commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the Confederate Con-federate States of America. During those two centuries the Virginia Hankses, like the Massachusetts Mass-achusetts Lincolns, had also begun be-gun to move westward, although not traveling so far as the New Englanders. Some time after the Indian uprising of 1675 and Bacon's Ba-con's rebellion of 1676 Thomas Hanks disappeared from history but not until he had started the line which would come to its greatest glory in the little boy who was born in a Kentucky log cabin 128 years ago this month. That line was as follows: Thomas Hanks. His son was William Hanks. Born probably in Gloucester county, Virginia, about 1655. Died in Richmond county in 1704. Kis son was John Hanks. Born in North Farnham parish in Richmond county, date unknown, and died in 1740. His son was Joseph Hanks. Born in North Farnham parish, December 20, 1725. Died in Nelson county, Kentucky Ken-tucky in 1793. His daughter was Lucy Hanks. Born probably in 1766 in Richmond county, Virginia, Vir-ginia, and died in 1825(7). Her daughter was Nancy Hanks. Born in Mineral county, West Virginia in 1783. Died in Spencer county, Indiana, October 5, 1818. Her son was Abraham Lincoln. In 1860 the America which had once hailed those frontier heroes, he-roes, "Old Hickory" Jackson and "Old Tippecanoe" Harrison was ready now to hail another frontiersman fron-tiersman "Old Abe" Lincoln. True, as an Indian fighter, his record in the Black Hawk war wasn't "much shakes" when compared to Jackson's conquest of the Creeks and Harrison's victories vic-tories over The Prophet and Tecumseh and their Shawnees. The "Rail-Splitter" Elected. But the ax was as potent a symbol as the rifle. Of course, it wasn't as useful to defend your cabin against the onslaughts of the "red devils." Eut, without it, you couldn't have built your cabin cab-in in the first place. And when then being such a county. Thus it was that an Abraham Lincoln crossed over the mountains into what was then "the West" and became the first Frontiersman Lincoln. Late in the spring he entered 400 acres of land on Floyd's Fork in what later became Jefferson county, Kentucky, and a little later 800 acres below Green River Riv-er Licks in Lincoln county. Two years later an official survey was made and his patents were issued in due course of time. But he did not live long to enjoy his new domain. A Frontier Tragedy. One morning in May, 1786, while Capt. Abraham Lincoln was at work on his farm near Hughes Station on Floyd's Fork Mordecai, dropped the red raider raid-er in his tracks. Despite this tragedy the widow, Bathsheba, continued to live on their new farm. That autumn when George Rogers Clark organized a company to fight the Indians, the settlers made contribution of arms jnd provisions to the extent of their ability. Highest in appraisal on the list was a fine rifle credited to "the widow Lincoln." One wonders won-ders if it was the rifle, notched with the knife of young Mordecai Morde-cai after he had avenged the death of the first Frontiersman, Abraham Lincoln. Later the Widow Lincoln moved with her brood to a hom? on Beech Fork in that part of Nelson county vhich later became be-came Washington county and there she lived until they were grown. One of them, young Tom Lincoln, was serving in the militia mili-tia at the age of seventeen. In 1798 he went to work as a hired hand for an uncle who lived on the Wautauga in Tennessee and, returning from there, he stopped in Cumberland county and bought some land. In 1802 he was made a constable in that county but he evidently didn't linger there long. He moved to Hardin . i : loni u t.. r., uuuiuy aiiu ill xouo uuugiiu a laiiii on Mill Creek. Most of the young folks of Kentucky in those days married early. But Tom Lincoln .didn't seem to be in any hurry to get himself a wife and settle down. That is, he didn't until his eyes finally rested one day on a twenty-three-year-old girl who had come with her family from Hampshire county, Virginia, (later Mineral county, West Virginia) Vir-ginia) back in 1784 when she was only a year old. Nancy Hanks was her name and she was the natural daughter of Lucy Hanks. But folks also called her Nancy Sparrow because Lucy Hanks, changing from the ways of her wild girlhood, had become the faithful wife of Henry Sparrow. A Century-Old Mystery. Who Nancy Hanks' father was is still as much a mystery today as it was that day more than three-quarters of a century ago when Abraham Lincoln told one of his friends that his unknown grandfather was "a Virginia gentleman" gen-tleman" from whom he had inherited in-herited whatever fine qualities he had. It was probably a mystery mys-tery also when the Hankses came to Kentucky. But evidently Tom Lincoln wasn't troubled by the fact that there was a taint on the name of Nancy Hanks. In June, 1806, he went back to Beech Fork and there on June 12, in the big double log house of a family named Berry, Rev. Jes- i-'--. & : :Ji'A:ifiT .w '-.j tr?;fi i F.M,r"?rl SiMSW .! -Xr - :i ' - ' . -S ? .' y( ' ". " . -.. ' - --i-- : :::i;.:;.-,....:::i;,;-,l.:...:...:.;x;2J Survey of Capt. Abraham Lincoln's SGO-acre farm on Green River, Ky. a skulking Indian shot him down. Sending his younger brother, Josiah, Jo-siah, to the station for help, seventeen-year-old Mordecai sprang into the cabin and seized the long rifle which rested on two wooden pegs set in the logs over the fireplace. Then, as the hideously-painted red man darted dart-ed from his ambush toward the place where little Tom Lincoln sat crying beside the body of his dead lather, a shot from the long nfle, poked through the un-chinked un-chinked longs of the cabin by se Head married Thomas Lincoln Lin-coln and Nancy Hanks. He took his bride first to Elizabethtown and there their first child was born a girl. A year before his marriage Tom Lincoln had bought a farm near Sinking Spring in Hardin county and there he took his family next. There on February 12, 1809, was born the boy who was given the name of his grandfather a name which Americans have enshrined en-shrined in their hearts. -VViu Service.' |