Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, the second child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, in a one-room log cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm in Hardin County, Kentucky[6] (now LaRue County). He was a descendant of Samuel Lincoln, who migrated from Norfolk, England to Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1638. Samuel's grandson and great-grandson began the family's western migration, which passed through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.[7][8] Lincoln's paternal grandfather and namesake, Captain Abraham Lincoln, moved the family from Virginia to Jefferson County, Kentucky in the 1780s.[9] Captain Lincoln was killed in an Indian raid in 1786. His children, including six-year-old Thomas, the future president's father, witnessed the attack.[10][11] After his father's murder, Thomas was left to make his own way on the frontier, working at odd jobs in Kentucky and in Tennessee, before settling with members of his family in Hardin County, Kentucky, in the early 1800s.[12][13] Lincoln's mother, Nancy, is widely assumed to have been the daughter of Lucy Hanks, although no record of Nancy Hanks' birth has ever been found.[14] According to William Ensign Lincoln's book The Ancestry of Abraham Lincoln, Nancy was the daughter of Joseph Hanks;[15] however, the debate continues over whether she was born out of wedlock. Still another researcher, Adin Baber, claims that Nancy Hanks was the daughter of Abraham Hanks and Sarah Harper of Virginia.[16] Of these three genealogies, Baber's is the only one consistent with the Quaker naming tradition that Nancy Hanks must have used in naming her children. Consistent with Baber's genealogy, Nancy named her oldest daughter Sarah after Sarah's maternal grandmother Sarah Harper, her oldest son Abraham after both of his grandfathers Abraham Hanks and Captain Abraham Lincoln, and her second son Thomas after his father Thomas Lincoln. Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were married on June 12, 1806, in Washington County, and moved to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, following their marriage.[17] They became the parents of three children: Sarah, born on February 10, 1807; Abraham, on February 12, 1809; and another son, Thomas, who died in infancy.[18] Thomas Lincoln bought or leased several farms in Kentucky, including the Sinking Spring farm, where Abraham was born; however, a land title dispute soon forced the Lincolns to move.[19][20] In 1811 the family moved eight miles north, to Knob Creek Farm, where Thomas acquired title to 230 acres (93 ha) of land. In 1815 a claimant in another land dispute sought to eject the family from the farm.[20] Of the 816.5 acres that Thomas held in Kentucky, he lost all but 200 acres (81 ha) of his land in court disputes over property titles.[21] Frustrated over the lack of security provided by Kentucky courts, Thomas sold the remaining land he held in Kentucky in 1814, and began planning a move to Indiana, where the land survey process was more reliable and the ability for an individual to retain land titles was more secure.[22] In 1816 the family moved north across the Ohio River to Indiana, a free, non-slaveholding territory, where they settled in an "unbroken forest"[23] in Hurricane Township, Perry County. (Their land in southern Indiana became part of Spencer County, Indiana, when the county was established in 1818.)[24][25] The farm is preserved as part of the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial. In 1860 Lincoln noted that the family's move to Indiana was "partly on account of slavery"; but mainly due to land title difficulties in Kentucky.[21][26] During the family's years in Kentucky and Indiana, Thomas Lincoln worked as a farmer, cabinetmaker, and carpenter.[27] He owned farms, several town lots and livestock, paid taxes, sat on juries, appraised estates, served on country slave patrols, and guarded prisoners. Thomas and Nancy Lincoln were also members of a Separate Baptists church, which had restrictive moral standards and opposed alcohol, dancing, and slavery.[28] Within a year of the family's arrival in Indiana, Thomas claimed title to 160 acres (65 ha) of Indiana land. Despite some financial challenges he eventually obtained clear title to 80 acres (32 ha) of land in what became known as the Little Pigeon Creek Community in Spencer County.[29] Prior to the family's move to Illinois in 1830, Thomas had acquired an additional twenty acres of land adjacent to his property. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln

• published: 09 Mar 2016
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