Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1892, volume 3).djvu/753

Rh Lincecum was an enthusiast in natural history, a regular correspondent of Charles Darwin, Alexan- der von Humboldt, Louis Agassiz, and other natu- ralists in this country and abroad, and a member of numerous scientific societies, to whose publica- tions, notably those of the Smithsonian institu- tion, the Franklin institute, and the Essex institute, Mass., he contributed valuable papers. To the latter institution he gave a collection representing forty-eight different families of ants and butter- flies, and to the Jardin des plantes in Paris he sent specimens of all the flora of Texas. Among his published papers is a valuable monograph on the red ant, to the study of which he devoted fourteen years. He wrote several works, which remain unpublished. These include " Traditions of the Choctaw Indians," among whom he lived for many years, "Medical History of the Southern United States," and an autobiography, now in the possession of his daughter.

LINCOLN, Abraham, sixteenth president of the United States, b. in Hardin county, Ky., 12 Feb., 1809; d. in Washington, D. C, 15 April, 1865. His earliest ancestor in America seems to have been Samuel Lincoln, of Norwich, England, who settled in Hingham, Mass., where he died, leav- ing a son, Mordecai, whose son of the same name removed to Monmouth, X. J., and thence to Berks county, Pa., dying there in 1735. He was a man of some property, which at his death was divid- ed among his sons and daughters, one of whom, John Lin- coln, having dis- posed of his land in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, estab- lished himself in Rockingham coun- ty, Va. The records of that county show that he was pos- sessed of a valuable estate, which was divided among five sons, one of whom, named Abraham, emigrated to Kentucky about 1780. At this time Daniel Boone was en- gaged in those labors and exploits in the new coun- try of Kentucky that have rendered his name illus- trious; and there is no doubt that Abraham Lin- coln was induced by his friendship for Boone to give up what seems to have been an assured social position in Virginia and take his family to share with him the risks and hardships of life in the new territory. The families of Boone and Lincoln had been closely allied for many years. Several mar- riages had taken place between them, and their names occur in each other's wills as friends and executors. The pioneer Lincoln, who took with him what for the time and place was a sufficient provision in money, the result of the sale of his property in Virginia, acquired by means of cash and land-warrants a large estate in Kentucky, as is shown by the records of Jefferson and Camp- bell counties. About 1784 he was killed by In- dians while working with his three sons — Mor- decai, Josiah, and Thomas — in clearing the forest. His widow removed after his death to Washington county, and there brought up her family. The two elder sons became reputable citizens, and the two daughters married in a decent condition of life. Thomas, the youngest son, seems to have been below the average of the family in enterprise and other qualities that command success. He learned the trade of a carpenter, and married, 12 June, 1806, Nancy Hanks, a niece of the man with whom he learned his trade. She is represented, by those who knew her at the time of her marriage, as a handsome young woman of twenty-three, of appearance and intellect superior to her lowly for- tunes. The young couple began housekeeping with little means. Three children were born to them ; the first, a girl, who grew to maturity, married, and died, leaving no children; the third a boy, who died in infancy ; the second was Abraham Lincoln. Thomas Lincoln remained in Kentucky until 1816, when he resolved to remove to the still newer country of Indiana, and settled in a rich and fertile forest country near Little Pigeon creek, not far distant from the Ohio river. The family suffered from diseases incident to pioneer life, and Mrs. Lincoln died in 1818 at the age of thirty-five. Thomas Lincoln, while on a visit to Kentucky, married a worthy, industrious, and intelligent widow named Sarah Bush Johnston. She was a woman of admirable order and system in her habits, and brought to the home of "the pioneer in the Indiana timber many of the comforts of civil- ized life. The neighborhood was one of the roughest. The president once said of it : "It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods, and there were some schools, so called; but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond readin', writ in', and cipherin' to the rule of three. If a straggler sup- posed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education." But in spite of this the boy Abraham made the best use of the limited oppor- tunities afforded him, and learned all that the half-educated backwoods teachers could impart ; and besides this he read over and over all the books he could find. He practised constantly the rules of arithmetic, which he had acquired at school, and began, even in his early childhood, to put in writing his recollections of what he had read and his impressions of what he saw about him. By the time he was nineteen years of age he had ac- quired a remarkably clear and serviceable hand- writing, and showed sufficient business capacity to be intrusted with a cargo of farm products, which lie took to New Orleans and sold. In 1830 his father emigrated once more, to Macon county, 111. Lin- coln had by this time attained his extraordinary stature of six feet four inches, and with it enormous muscular strength, which was at once put at the disposal of his father in building his cabin, char- ing the field, and splitting from the walnut forests, which were plentiful in that county, the rails with which the farm was fenced. Thomas Lincoln, however, soon deserted this new home, his last migration being to Goose Nest Prairie, in Coles county, where he died in 1851. seventy-three years of age. In his last days he was tenderly cared for by his son.

Abraham Lincoln left his father's house as soon as the farm was fenced and cleared, hired himself to a man named Denton Offutt, in Sangamon county, assisted him to build a flat-boat, accompanied him to New Orleans on a trading voyage, and returned with him to New Salem, in Menard county, where Offutt opened a store for the sale of general merchandise. Little was accomplished in this way, and Lincoln employed his too abundant