LIFE OF LINCOLN CHAPTER I THE ORIGIN OF THE LINCOLN FAMILY-THE LINCOLNS IN KENTUCKY-BIRTH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN Two of these men, but Samuel left a Among the descendants BETWEEN the years 1635 and 1645 there came to the town of Hingham, Massachusetts, from the west of England, eight men named Lincoln. Three of these, Samuel, Daniel, and Thomas, were brothers. Their relationship, if any, to the other Lincolns who came over from the same part of England at about the same time, is not clear. Daniel and Thomas, died without heirs; large family, including four sons. of Samuel Lincoln's sons were many good citizens and prominent public officers. One was a member of the Boston Tea Party, and served as a captain of artillery in the War of the Revolution. Three served on the brig Hazard during the Revolution. Levi Lincoln, a great-great-grandson of Samuel, born in Hingham in 1749, and graduated from Harvard, was one of the minute-men at Cambridge immediately after the battle of Lexington, a delegate to the convention in Cambridge for framing a state constitution, and in 1781 was elected to the continental congress, but declined to serve. He was a member of the house of representatives and of the senate of Massachusetts, and was appointed attorney-general of the United States by Jefferson; for a few months preceding the arrival of Madison he was secretary of state, and in 1807 he was elected lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts. In 1811 he was appointed associate justice of the United States Supreme Court by President Madison, an office which he declined. From the close of the Revolutionary war he was considered the head of the Massachusetts bar. His eldest son, Levi Lincoln, born in 1782, had also an honorable career. He was a Harvard graduate, became governor of the state of Massachusetts, and held other important public offices. He received the degree of LL. D. from both Williams College, and Harvard College. Another son of Levi Lincoln, Enoch Lincoln, served in congress from 1818 to 1826. He became governor of Maine in 1827, holding the position until his death in 1829. Enoch Lincoln was a writer of more than ordinary ability. The fourth son of Samuel Lincoln was called Mordecai. Mordecai was a rich "blacksmith," as an iron-worker was called in those days, and the proprietor of numerous ironworks, saw-mills, and grist-mills, which with a goodly amount of money he distributed at his death among his children and grandchildren. Two of his children, Mordecai and Abraham, did not remain in Massachusetts, but removed to New Jersey, and thence to Pennsylvania, where both became rich, and dying, left fine estates to their children. Their descendants in Pennsylvania have continued to this day to be well-to-do people, some of them having taken prominent positions in public affairs. Abraham Lincoln, of Berks county, who was born in 1736 and died in 1806, filled many public offices, being a member of the general assembly of Pennsylvania, of the state convention of 1787, and of the state constitutional convention in 1790. One of the sons of this second Mordecai, John, received from his father "three hundred acres of land, lying in the Jerseys." But evidently he did not care to cultivate his inheritance, for about 1758 he removed to Virginia. "Virginia John," as this member of the family was called, had |