Published: July 12, 2008 08:04 pm            

GENEALOGY: Stunning document questions Lincoln ancestry

TERRE HAUTE — Several years ago, I reviewed a book called Genealogy of the American Presidents. According to that book, I found that I might be related to Abraham Lincoln. I found two of my ancestors in his genealogy, but there were question marks in the book about his genealogy. Maybe he wasn’t actually descended from those ancestors.

Now Genealogy Today, an online magazine, is featuring a stunning document that questions the ancestry of our 16th president even further. Maybe Honest Abe wasn’t really a Lincoln at all. The document, available in its entirety on line, was written by R. Vincent Enlow. Enlow is a man of some renown. Now in his 80s, he is a former marketing executive of Ford Motor International and winner of a “Clio” award for television advertising. In addition, he is a political cartoonist, artist, sculptor, and member of the family which he says is the true paternal lineage of Abraham Lincoln.

The story goes like this: During Abraham Lincoln’s life, there were persistent questions about his origins. Lincoln himself was vague on this issue to the public, but did confide some things to his law partner, William H. Herndon. After Lincoln’s assassination, many books were being written on him, and it became necessary to speak about his origins in more concrete terms. His son Robert Todd Lincoln was then the Secretary of War. Robert didn’t want certain things revealed about his family, and so supported a “sanitized” version of Lincoln’s birth and genealogy. He was able to suppress alternative versions, although they persisted in cropping up over the years.

Author Enlow presents the evidence collected by Lincoln’s law partner Hernon and author James H. Cathey (Genesis of Lincoln in 1899) and J. C. Coggins (Abraham Lincoln: A North Carolinian with Proof, 2nd edition, 1927). He reviews this evidence and the testimony of over 50 people who knew the Hanks family and Lincoln himself.

The story starts with Lucy Hanks, Lincoln’s maternal grandmother. The Hanks family was from Virginia, but settled in Rutherford County, North Carolina. There Lucy, unmarried at the time, gave birth to two illegitimate children–daughter Nancy in 1783-4 and daughter Manda. The daughter Nancy’s father was supposedly Michael Tanner of Rutherford County. Lucy was poor and unable to take care of her children. They lived for a time with Lucy’s brother Dick Hanks. Dick was an alcoholic and also unable to support them. So when Nancy was about 8 or 10 years old, she was bound out to the family of Abraham Enloe to serve the family and be raised almost like their daughter. Abram Enloe was a well-known and successful businessman and a horse trader. The daughter Manda was sent to live with a family named Pratt.

Several years later, the Enloe family moved from Rutherford County west to Buncombe County, near Cherokee lands. They settled at a river called Ocuna Lufta (not far from present-day Asheville, NC). Nancy Hanks moved with them. But around 1803-4, Nancy became pregnant with Abraham Enloe’s baby.

This created discord within the family, so Enloe moved Nancy out of the home and back to his old place on Puzzle Creek in Rutherford County, which had tenants. The tenants cared for Nancy until the baby Abraham was born. Later, Enloe arranged for Nancy Hanks and baby Abraham to be transported to Kentucky by his son-in-law who already lived there.

Enloe kept in touch and sent money for the support of the baby. On one of his business trips into Kentucky, Enloe met Thomas Lincoln and made an agreement with him to marry Nancy Hanks and take the boy in. In return, Lincoln was paid $500. Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks married on June 12, 1806, in Washington County, Kentucky.

What to make of all of this? To be continued next week.

        

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