Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v1.djvu/25

Rh himself. This youngest son grew to manhood, and on June 10, 1806, was married, at Beechland, Ky., to a young woman of a family well known in the vicinity, Nancy Hanks. There is no doubt whatever about the time and the place of their marriage. All the legal documents required in Kentucky at that period for a marriage are in existence. Not only have we the bond and the certificate, but the marriage is duly entered in a list of marriage returns made by Jesse Head, one of the best-known early Methodist ministers of Kentucky. It is now to be seen in the records of Washington County, Kentucky. There is even in existence a very full and amusing account of the wedding and the infare which followed, by a guest who was present, and who for years after was accustomed to visit Thomas and Nancy. This guest, Christopher Columbus Graham, a unique and perfectly trustworthy man, a prominent citizen of Louisville, died only a few years ago.

But while these documents dispose effectually of the question of the parentage of Lincoln, they do not, of course, clear up the shadow which hangs over the parentage of his mother. Is there anything to show that Nancy Hanks herself was of as clear and clean lineage as her husband? There had been nothing whatever until, a few years ago, through the efforts of Mrs. Caroline Hanks Hitchcock of Cambridge, Mass., who had in preparation the genealogy of the Hanks family in America, a little volume was published, showing what she had established in regard to Nancy Hanks. Mrs. Hitchcock had begun at the far end of the line—the arrival of one Benjamin Hanks in Massachusetts in 1699.