Photo: Friend, neighbor, and birthday boy, in his earliest known daguerreotype.
According to history books (which must mean it is true) Abraham Lincoln was born today, a mere 217 years after the fact. Since then, we have become a nation of skeptics, questioning if facts mean what we think they do. To the only president we have ever credited as ‘honest,’ now is a good time to question that premise.
From the time Abraham Lincoln decided to get politically active, he had a problem concerning his heritage. According to persistent stories that roamed around the Appalachians, Abe was much more a product of western North Carolina than central Kentucky. Here’s how family members tell what they regard as the truth about our 16th president. While Nancy Hanks was indeed, Abraham Lincoln’s biological mother, Tom Lincoln was only his stepfather. It all goes back to the early 18th century and the town of Rutherfordton. One day, Nancy stood on the courthouse steps with no place to go. Abandoned by her mother, Nancy and her sister needed help. Local magistrate Abraham Enloe took the girl in so she could serve as a maid for his family, which included 16 children.
Those are all of the documented facts of the case. Rumor takes over when we turn to the nature of a relationship that developed between Enloe and Nancy Hanks. Despite a 16 year difference in their ages, an intimate relationship produced a pregnancy. When Enloe’s wife found out, the situation worsened.
The Enloe’s prospered on the frontier, thanks to Abraham’s business acumen. The family moved to the banks of the Oconaluftee River (which is today adjacent to the Cherokee Eastern Band Reservation). Enloe planned to care for the mother of his newest child by sending her back down the mountain to the old family farm outside of Rutherfordton. On this day (or maybe another since this event needed covering up) Abraham Lincoln was born in Bostic, NC to an uncertain future.
Abraham Enloe needed a father for his son, so he reportedly paid a cattle driver named Tom Lincoln to marry Nancy and move away. The couple headed for Kentucky, to a new farm Lincoln was able to buy. Tom ended up squandering that property away. Nancy died when Abraham was still a boy, leaving father and son somewhat estranged. When Tom died, his son did not go to the funeral.
By that point, Abraham Lincoln was a prosperous lawyer, working mostly for corporate railroad interests. However, political ambitions were rising in him and when time came to run for office, Abraham answered inquiries about his background by writing, “it is great folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.” He added, “it can be condensed into a single sentence, and that sentence you will find in Gray’s Elegy: ‘The short and simple annuls of the poor.’ That’s my life and that’s all you or anyone else can make of it.”
Most of the story we know about Lincoln’s upbringing came once he was gone. His assassination required that only the most charitable of versions of his parentage be used to tell his story. Out of loyalty to his father, son Robert Todd Lincoln became the arbiter of Lincoln lore and refuted what might have been the truth. The only way to get to a clear answer today is DNA, which has yet to happen.
Happy Birthday, Abe, whatever your story.
