Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v1.djvu/46

16 innuendo in Lamon's Life of Lincoln concerning Lincoln's parents, himself searched for and found the marriage certificate of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks; and in testifying under oath about it, embraced this paragraph: "The mother of Nancy (Hanks) Lincoln, who was the mother of President Abraham Lincoln, was an own cousin of affiant's mother." This was on the theory that she was a Berry. I repeat, the general and the particular repute that Lucy Hanks was a Berry is as firmly grounded as any fact in Washington County. The Herald of that county once stated that she was a Shipley. This was a natural mistake, her grandmother being a Shipley, and the Shipleys and Berrys being closely interrelated; her grandmother and Presi- dent Lincoln's grandmother were sisters, and, of course, their great-grandparents in that time were identical.

I am not unaware that John and Dennis Hanks call her a Sparrow, but they also call the President's grandfather Mordecai. There is no real basis for either statement, except as I have stated, nor am I unaware that a higher authority than the Hankses does not concur in my arrangement of the pedigree of Nancy Hanks; but it is a maxim in equity that "what ought to be done is considered as done," and inasmuch as this statement, well known to close students of Lincolnian biography, ought not to have been made, or, if made, ought not to be printed, it should be treated as not made at all ; and besides, however wise or interested a party might be in general, it does not follow that he knew any more (or even as much) about such a matter than others. In addition to all, in a conflict of evidence, that