Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a one-room log cabin on the Sinking Spring farm, south of Hodgenville in Hardin County, Kentucky (present-day LaRue County). His two siblings were Sarah Lincoln Grigsby and Thomas Lincoln, Jr. After a land title dispute forced the family to leave in 1811, they relocated to Knob Creek farm, eight miles to the north. By 1814, Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's father, had lost most of his land in Kentucky in legal disputes over land titles. In 1816, Thomas and Nancy Lincoln, their nine-year-old daughter Sarah, and seven-year-old Abraham moved to what became Indiana, where they settled in Hurricane Township, Perry County, Indiana. (Their land became part of Spencer County, Indiana, when it was formed in 1818.)
Lincoln spent his formative years, from the age of 7 to 21, on the family farm in Little Pigeon Creek Community of Spencer County, in southwestern Indiana. As was common on the frontier, Lincoln received a meager formal education, the accumulation of just under twelve months. However, Lincoln continued to learn on his own from life experiences, and through reading and reciting what he had read or heard from others. In October 1818, two years after they arrived in Indiana, nine-year-old Lincoln lost his birth mother, Nancy, who died after a brief illness known as milk sickness. Thomas Lincoln returned to Elizabethtown, Kentucky late the following year and married Sarah Bush Johnston on December 2, 1819. Lincoln's new stepmother and her three children joined the Lincoln family in Indiana in late 1819. A second tragedy befell the family in January 1828, when Sarah Lincoln Grigsby, Abraham's sister, died in childbirth.
In March 1830, 21-year-old Lincoln joined his extended family in a move to Illinois. After helping his father establish a farm near Decatur in Macon County, Illinois, Lincoln set out on his own in the spring of 1831. Lincoln settled in the village of New Salem where he worked as a boatman, store clerk, surveyor, and militia soldier during the Black Hawk War, and became a lawyer in Illinois. He was elected to the Illinois Legislature in 1834 and was reelected in 1836, 1838, 1840, and 1844. In November 1842, Lincoln married Mary Todd; the couple had four sons. In addition to his law career, Lincoln continued his involvement in politics, serving in the United States House of Representatives from Illinois in 1846. He was elected president of the United States on November 6, 1860.
Ancestry
Lincoln's first known ancestor in America was Samuel Lincoln, who migrated from Hingham, England to Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1637. Samuel's son, Mordecai, remained in Massachusetts, but Samuel's grandson, who was also named Mordecai, began the family's western migration. John Lincoln, Samuel's great-grandson, continued the westward journey. Born in New Jersey, John moved to Pennsylvania, then brought his family to Virginia. John's son, Captain Abraham Lincoln, who earned that rank for his service in the Virginia militia, was the future president's paternal grandfather and namesake. Born in Berks County, Pennsylvania, he moved with his father and other family members to Virginia's Shenandoah Valley sometime before 1768. The family settled near Linville Creek, in Augusta County, now Rockingham County, Virginia. Captain Lincoln bought a total of 452 acres in Rockingham County, including some of his father's property, before the family moved to Kentucky.
Thomas Lincoln, the future president's father, was born in Virginia in January 1778 and moved west to Jefferson County, Kentucky, with his father, mother, and siblings around 1782, when he was about five years old. In May 1786, at the age of forty-two, Captain Abraham Lincoln was killed in an Indian ambush while working his fields in Kentucky. Eight-year-old Thomas witnessed his father's murder and might have ended up a victim if his brother, Mordecai, had not shot the attacker. After Captain Lincoln's death, Thomas's mother, Bathsheba Lincoln, moved to Washington County, Kentucky, while Thomas worked at odd jobs in several Kentucky locations. Thomas also spent a year working in Tennessee, before settling with members of his family in Hardin County, Kentucky, in the early 1800s.
The identity of Lincoln's maternal grandfather is unclear. In a conversation with William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner and one of his biographers, the president implied that his grandfather was "a Virginia planter or large farmer", but did not identify him. Lincoln felt that it was from this aristocratic grandfather that he had inherited "his power of analysis, his logic, his mental activity, his ambition, and all the qualities that distinguished him from the other members and descendants of the Hanks family." Lincoln's maternal grandmother, Lucy Hanks, may have migrated to Kentucky, with her daughter, Nancy. There was a debate over whether Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, was born out of wedlock. Mitochondrial DNA tests of descendants of Lucy Hanks have shown this to be true.Suzanne W. Hallstrom, Nancy C. Royce, Stephan A. Whitlock, Richard G. Hileman, M.A., J.D., Gerald M. Haslam, "Nancy Hanks Lincoln DNA Results", https://geneticlincoln.com/nhl-mtdna/ Nancy resided with Rachael Shipley Berry, and her husband, Richard Berry Sr., in Washington County, Kentucky. Nancy is believed to have remained with the Berry family after her mother's marriage to Henry Sparrow, which took place several years after the women arrived in Kentucky. The Berry home was about a mile and a half from the home of Thomas Lincoln's mother; the families were neighbors for seventeen years. It was during this time that Thomas met Nancy. Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were married on June 12, 1806, at the Beech Fork settlement in Washington County, Kentucky. The Lincolns moved to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, following their marriage.
Unproven rumors
Biographers have rejected numerous rumors about Lincoln's paternity. According to historian William E. Barton, one of these rumors began circulating in 1861 "in various forms in several sections of the South" that Lincoln's biological father was Abraham Enloe, a resident of Rutherford County, North Carolina, who died in that same year. However, Barton dismissed the rumors as "false from beginning to end." Enloe publicly denied his connection to Lincoln, but is reported to have privately confirmed it. The Bostic Lincoln Center in Bostic, North Carolina, also claims that Abraham Lincoln was born in Rutherford County, North Carolina, and argues the case that Nancy Hanks had an illegitimate child while she was working for the Enloe family.
Rumors of Lincoln's ethnic and racial heritage were also circulated, especially after he entered national politics. Citing Chauncey Burr's Catechism, which references a "pamphlet by a western author adducing evidence", David J. Jacobson has suggested Lincoln was "part Negro", but the claim is unproven. Lincoln also received mail that called him "a negro" and a "mulatto".
Lincoln's appearance Lincoln was described as "ungainly" and "gawky" as a youth. Tall for his age, Lincoln was strong and athletic as a teenager. He was a good wrestler, participated in jumping, throwing, and local footraces, and "was almost always victorious." His stepmother remarked that he cared little for clothing. Lincoln dressed as an ordinary boy from a poor, backwoods family, with a gap between his shoes, socks, and pants that often exposed six or more inches of his shin. His lack of interest in his attire continued as an adult. When Lincoln lived in New Salem, Illinois, he frequently appeared with a single suspender, and no vest or coat.
In 1831, the year after he left Indiana, Lincoln was described as six feet three or four inches tall, weighing 210 pounds, and had a ruddy complexion. Later descriptions included Lincoln's dark hair and dark complexion, which were also evident in photographs taken during his tenure as president of the United States. William H. Herndon described Lincoln as having "very dark skin"; his cheeks as "leathery and saffron-colored"; a "sallow" complexion; and "his hair was dark, almost black". Lincoln described himself as "black" and as having "a dark complexion" Lincoln's detractors also remarked on his appearance. For example, during the American Civil War the Charleston, South Carolina Mercury described him as having "the dirtiest complexion" and asked "Faugh! After him what white man would be President?"
Early years (1809–1831) During his later years, Lincoln was reluctant to discuss his origins. He viewed himself as a self-made man and may have also found it difficult to confront the untimely deaths of his mother and his sister. However, around the time of his nomination as a candidate for president of the United States, Lincoln provided two brief biographical sketches in response to two inquiries that provide a glimpse of youth in Kentucky and Indiana. One request for a campaign biography came from his friend and fellow Illinois Republican, Jesse W. Fell, in 1859; the other request came from John Locke Scripps, a journalist for the Chicago Press and Tribune. In Lincoln's response to Scripps, he summed up his early life in a quote from Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, as "the short and simple annals of the poor." Additional details of Lincoln's early life appeared after his death in 1865, when William Herndon began collecting letters and interviews from Lincoln's friends, family and acquaintances. Herndon published his collected materials in Herndon's Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (1889). Although Herndon's work is often challenged, historian David Herbert Donald argues that they "have largely shaped current beliefs" about Lincoln's early life in Kentucky, Indiana and his early days in Illinois.
Early life in Kentucky (1809–1816)
On February 10, 1807, Sarah Lincoln was born. In December 1808, Thomas, Nancy, and their daughter, Sarah, moved from Elizabethtown to the Sinking Spring farm, on Nolin Creek, near Hodgen's Mill, in Hardin County, Kentucky. (The farm is part of the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park in present-day LaRue County, Kentucky.) Abraham was born at the farm two months after the move, on February 12, 1809. Due to a land title dispute, the family lived at the farm only two more years before being forced to move. Thomas continued legal action in court but lost the case in August 1816. Kentucky's survey methods, which used a system of metes and bounds to identify and describe land descriptions, proved to be unreliable when the natural features of the land changed. This issue, compounded by confusion over previous land grants and purchase agreements, caused continual legal disputes over land ownership in Kentucky. In the summer of 1811, the family relocated to Knob Creek farm, now a part of the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park, eight miles to the north. Situated in a valley of the Rolling Fork River, it had some of the best farmland in the area. Lincoln's earliest recollections of his boyhood are from this farm. A son, Thomas Lincoln, Jr., or "Tommy", was born in either 1812 or 1813 and died three days later. In 1815 a claimant in another land dispute sought to eject the Lincoln family from the Knob Creek farm.