Lincoln of German Descent.—For some years a very interesting discussion has been going on among historians as to the ancestry of President Lincoln. Some claim that he was of English descent and others that his forebears were German. Each disputant gives facts to uphold his theory and is unconvinced by the other, so that the discussion is not yet closed.

When Lincoln became a candidate for President, one Jesse W. Fell prepared his campaign biography. When he asked Lincoln for details as to his ancestors he received this reply: “My parents were born in Virginia of undistinguished families—second families, perhaps I should say. My parental grandfather emigrated from Rockingham County, Va., to Kentucky, about 1781 or1782. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names in which both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham,etc.”

Nicolay and Hay, who were secretaries to the President and intimate with him, published an extensive biography in1890. Prof. M.D. Learned, editor of the German-American Annals, made a special study of the subject, and published the results in1910. Both of these authorities uphold the English descent. L.P. Hennighausen, of Baltimore, is the leading advocate of the German descent.

Both parties agree that the grandfather of the President was also named Abraham; that he came from Rockingham County, Va., to Kentucky; that his father, John, came to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania; and that these ancestors were Quakers, or non-combatants. Grandfather Abraham bought 400acres in Kentucky, and on his Land Warrant in1780, and also in the Surveyor’s Certificate in 1785, the name is spelled “Linkhorn” in each instance.

The first named biographers claim that John’s father was Mordecai, who came from Hingham, Mass., to Berks County, Pennsylvania, in1725. His father was Samuel Lincoln, who emigrated from England in1635, and settled in the above named New England town. The descendants of this family spread over New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. The German name “Linkhorn” is brushed aside as the blunder of a clerk.

The argument for a German ancestry does not go so far back in genealogy, and bases itself more on geography and spelling. It so happens that Berks County and Rockingham County were solid German settlements. In the Pennsylvania county the German dialect is still in general use, and the “Reading Adler,” a German newspaper established in1796, was issued until 1913, still being one of the few journalistic centenarians in the country. When Washington, as a young man, was surveying Rockingham County, “he was attended by a great concourse of people, who followed him through the woods and would speak none but German.” Many of these settlers were non-combatants, that is, Quakers or Mennonites.

That the name “Linkhorn” in the two documents mentioned is not a mistake is shown by the fact that in the Surveyor’s Certificate is the signature, “Abraham Linkhorn.” And what is even more puzzling and curious, the two witnesses sign as “Josiah Lincoln” and “Hananiah Lincoln.” A search of Virginia records from 1766 to1776 shows that Clayton Abraham Linkhorn was the youngest officer in the militia, and his name, appearing on many different pages, is always spelled in that manner. On the census lists and tax lists in Pennsylvania the names Benjamin, John, Michael, and Jacob Linkhorn appear, and Nicolay and Hay state that in Tennessee and Kentucky the family name is also thus spelled.

This divergence of opinion is not confined to historians, but has even innoculated the Lincoln family. Some years ago David J.Lincoln, of Birdsboro, Berks Co., Pa., published a pedigree of the Lincoln family. This was at once challenged by Geo.Lincoln, of Hingham, Mass., who published a wholly different pedigree.

The evidence in favor of Lincoln’s German descent cannot be waved aside as the error of a clerk. The purchaser of a strip of land would not expose his title to future legal complications without insisting on a correction of his name, whereas five years and two months elapsed between the issue of the landoffice warrant and the surveyor’s certificate, in which the alleged error is distinctly duplicated. Again the name “Linkhorn” appears under the name of two witnesses spelling their names “Lincoln,” conclusive proof that the distinction was a conscious performance and not an accident. A reasonable conclusion would be that other members of the family had begun to spell their name “Lincoln” instead of “Linkhorn,” probably following popular use in a community predominantly of English ancestry, as is the case of so many names in the German counties of Pennsylvania. When Koester is anglicised into Custer, Hauk into Hawke, Reyer into Royer, Greims into Grimes and Brauer into Brower, as evidenced by many tombstones of long-dead ancestors, it is a most plausible inference that the same process evolved “Lincoln” from “Linkhorn.”

A bit of interesting collateral evidence in favor of the Linkhorn hypothesis is supplied the editor of the present book by Mrs. G.W. Garvey, who resided in Hoboken, N.J., until 1919, when she removed to California. Mrs.Garvey’s maiden name was Bennett. Her grandparents resided in close proximity to the family of the Lincolns in Illinois. Her grandmother, Mrs. Dameron, often spoke of the Lincolns as neighbors who were referred to as “Dutch” people, “because the Lincolns were in the habit of killing a hog in the fall and making sausages and sauerkraut,” which were among the delicacies exchanged among their neighbors and friends, a typical German custom.