Arlene Eakle’s Kentucky Blog

A few weeks ago, I consulted the early Kentucky land patents databases online.  And ran head-on into some of the most difficult problems of indexing records for digital recall.

1. Multiple spellings of surnames.  You know the importance of watching for other spellings of your surname of interest.  Anticipating those spellings enables you to search databases more completely.  And while some online programing, like Ancestry’s online census access, includes a variety of surnames alternates, some does not.
2. Indexing the principal parties in a document vs every-name indexes.  If one record series has an every-name index, do all the record series include every name?  When these indexes are merged into a single index, the gap may not be obvious.  It takes use to spot the problem.
3. Are multiple entries for the same name on the same page all individually indexed?  The typist may conclude that seeing the multiple names as they appear on the page is enough.  The index does not have to be expanded to a separate entry for each instance of the same name.

What the Kentucky government has done is extraordinary.  Twelve (12) different record categories are now indexed online:

__Kentucky Cities

__Virginia and Old Kentucky Patent Series (called Virginia Surveys                             and Grants)

__Revolutionary War Warrants

__West of Tennessee River (Jackson Purchase) Military Patents

__Certificates of Settlement and Preemption Warrants

__Virginia Treasury Warrants Database

__Lincoln Entries  (Lincoln County)

__County Court Order Patents

__Jackson Purchase Database

__West of Tennessee Non-Military Patents

__Wills included with Land Patent Files

__County Formations and Boundary Changes Database

And when you request a name in the search screen, the pages where that name appears are links.  When you clkick the links, the name you requested appears on the page highlighted in yellow for easy spotting.

Just be very careful that you request, separately,  all the different spellings for your surname of interest.

For example:  I requested Isaac Ruddell in the search screen.  Yellow highlights appeared  on two pages–as Isaac Ross and as Isaac Ruddell.

Then I requested Isaac Ruddle.  Yellow highlight appeared on one entry for Isaac Ruddle. Immediately above the Isaac Ruddle entry, was an entry for Isaac Ruddell, not highlighted.  Nor was it found in the Ruddell search.

Since the entries are alphabetical by surname, I then checked under the alpha spelling of Ruddle–Bingo!  Two more Isaac Ruddle entries that did not appear in the index search.  AND:  two entries for George Ruddle, one entry for James Ruddle, four entries for John Ruddle, Heirs of and listing James Ruddle & Heirs as the grantee for each of those four entries.  Also discovered were two entries for Cornelius Ruddell, in the alpha list for that spelling.

The four grantee entries for James Ruddle were lost–since they were not in the alpha section, where they could be easily retrieved.  And no entries appeared for Stephen Ruddle/Ruddell, although he was a resident of Woodford County KY where he died about 1800.

My recommendations:

1. Check under each and every spelling of your surname of interest.
2. Search the alpha arrangement to spot additional entries not yet found.
3. Note other persons named in the entries with your surnames.  And check each of their entries by index and by alpha arrangement.  Often, men had partners as they applied for land.

This way you have a greater chance of finding all the entries.  And when you are trying to fit everyone into family units eventually, you need everyone identified in the record series.

This is not a commentary meant to question the integrity of the indexes.  It is a commentary to ensure that you find all the entries that concern your ancestry.  Online indexing is an art, not a science.  So is research.  And you and I both need to invest extra time when we use digital indexes.

Too many genealogy/family conclusions are based on shallow use of indexes.  And those conclusions are too often faulty.  Break your losing streak!  Invest the time to find the entries.  Your favorite Kentucky genealogist, Arlene Eakle http://arleneeakle.com

PS  I am planning a genealogy research trip into KY and TN the first week in May 2010–I have a conference in Dallas TX then and I will have time to do the research.  If you have research problem that you have not been able to solve–let me take a crack at it–in the field–in records you have had access to.  I am often able to get your research going again.  So let me know by email of your interest!

Question: What gives  sports greats like Michael Jordan and Ron Jaworski, Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, their athletic value?  Why are they worth the gigantic contract payments they command?

Answer: “Muscle memory”–they have drilled their bodies in the same motion until their muscles (and other body parts) respond without conscious thought or deviation.  Jaworski threw the same pass, to master the perfect throw, more than 20,000 times!

The Utah Jazz, a basketball team who has fielded some incredible players, could never get it right.  There is a point in many games when, as a team,  they falter.  They tire.  They lose focus. They slow down.  And they lose.

In Kentucky genealogy research, “muscle memory” is needed–perhaps more than any other state.  The ability to recognize data gaps and determine which substitute sources and records will fill in the missing data must be honed to a science.  Not just an occasional show of brilliance; a constant, over and over understanding is required.

Kentucky ancestors are difficult to trace–

• through other Kentucky counties
• into and through North and South Carolina
• back to Virginia, and Maryland, and into Delaware, but mostly to Virginia.

Who are these ancestors?  Who flow like water cascading down a chasm into the mountain valleys of Eastern Kentucky?

In A Darkness at Dawn:  Appalachian Kentucky and the Future, Harry M. Caudill poses such a question. This is just a little book.  Part of the Kentucky Bicentennial Bookshelf published 1976 by the University of Kentucky Press in Lexington.  A small companion piece to his other perceptive studies of Kentucky:  Night Comes to the Cumberland, Dark Hills to Westward, and My Land is Dying.

Most of the family names that sound in the Kentucky hills today were already in America, mainly in Virginia, a full century before Thomas Jefferson took up his quill pen to write the Declaration of  Independence.

I am, of course, aware that many careful students, including the eminently respectable genealogist, William C. Kozee hold to the view that the Scotch-Irish is the predominant strain in Appalachia.  There is a possibility that they are right, but other evidence is against them.

Caudill makes a compelling argument:  the structured religion of the Scotch-Irish, accepted by covenant in Scotland and carried like a banner with these people through Ireland into America.  By the beginning of the Revolutionary War, one-sixth of the total population was of this stock, clinging passionately to their Presbyterianism.

Not so in eastern Kentucky.  When the tireless Presbyterian evangelist, E.O. Guerrant traveled through the Kentucky hills, he found 90% of the people unchurched! Although only 10% belonged to the Baptist faith, almost the entire population considered themselves to be Baptist.  Presbyterianism was nowhere to be found.

Another circumstance that argues against the notion of Scotch-Irish predominance among the settlers of Appalachian Kentucky was their persistent illiteracy.  The Ulstermen were, in the main, well schooled by the standards of the time, with a deeply rooted insistence on an educated clergy.

Few [Kentucky] counties had a school of any kind a half-century after settlers began to arrive. Notwithstanding the rough terrain and the distances between families, it is hard to suppose a populace strongly influenced by Scotch-Irish would have lapsed into the unrelieved illiteracy and general ignorance that gripped the region when the “mission teachers” began to arrive eighty years ago.

More than 90% of Scotch-Irish signed their names to documents, petitions, and other written instruments.  Few made a mark.

These circumstances reflect an original populace that was essentially rootless, deprived by their history of church, schooling, and other established cultural facets.  It was a populace that wanted mostly to be left alone and was significantly lacking in the ambition for worldly gain that drove the Scotch-Irish, Huguenots, and Germans, and later the Jews, from Europe’s ghettos.

What we need is more practice.  More study.  More in-depth contact with the ancestors who resided in eastern Kentucky, and whose descendants are still to be found there today.  So that we can recognize, with “cultural memory” just who these ancestors are and where they originate.  The last word for Appalachian Kentucky has not been written.  Your favorite Kentucky genealogist, Arlene Eakle   http://arleneeakle.com

PS  My apologies for the gap in Kentucky blog entries:  My entire communications system failed in mid-September and was not restored until early December.  There is a lane along the edge of my property line.  It is being used by large construction equipment to re-build the county high school.  As nearly as we can figure out, a large machine took out the whole system.  My provider company had to re-run the line and supply a new modem.  Satellite television sets still do not work correctly.  So those modems may have to be replaced too.

PPS  A warning:  I live at the end of the world.  No kidding, I’m serious.  And the state-wide power company is installing a new power grid through the Northern part of the state of Utah–with power poles the likes of which we have never seen.  Objective:  to prevent power outages and brown-outs.  That will be wonderful.  Until it is all up and working well, we still have frequent outages.  So my system may fail again.  I will have a wireless laptop later this month–and it may be able to fill in.

Sometimes I feel a kinship with those worthy ancestors in Appalachian Kentucky!

Webmaster Kathryn here to let you know that’s why she’s missing in action.

An article caught my attention in the New Yorker, 21 Sep 1998, written by Tony Earley, “The Quare Gene.”  So I clipped it and filed it with my genealogy files.

Quare is an adjective the Scots-Irish used to mean queer, eccentric.  Most dictionaries say the word is archaic and obsolete.  Earley reported that as spoken around his mother’s dining table, the word quare “is as current as the breath that produces it, as pointed as a sharpened stick.”  It means suspicious, odd, unusual, strange as well as queer.  [Not to mention what modern English has done to the word queer.]

Words like peaked, trifling, poke, were words Earley grew up with and took for granted.  “I heard them around me, and I breathed them in like air,” he writes.  He was embarrassed and ashamed of his speech, when corrected by classmates.  When he entered college and took an Appalachian-studies class, he learned that he and his family spoke a dialect.

This Appalachian dialect is considered a sign of ignorance and stupidity.  Earley learned the dialect as his mother tongue.  Standard English he learned as a second language.  Teachers and even family members consider this speech to be “colorful.”

It was in Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders, written in 1904, that Earley discovered that his primary language was as close to the Elizabethan English that Shakespeare used or the Middle English of Chaucer.  And in the high mountain valleys of North Carolina and Kentucky, where the population was largely isolated until the building of roads, the mailing of the Sears Roebuck catalog, and the penetration of the hills by American radio,  the speech patterns of the Highlanders didn’t change.

This makes Southern language up to 800 years or more old!

These precious words represent the history and migration of these peoples across parts of Europe, the British Isles, and into the American South.

I invite you to go to your nearest Public Library and read or borrow on interlibrary loan Earley’s article and read it all. He talks of his ancient great-grandfather, Paw Womack, who placed him in his family lineage.  Then sat in quiet companionship and acceptance with him on the porch.  “I’m Reba’s boy, Clara Mae’s grandson, Tom Womack’s great-grandson.”

And he mourns the loss of the word quare and its contained history that will take place with his generation.  And although he does not try to make a case for ethnic integrity–you will wish as I do, that the culture and history represented in this word could continue down the generations.

Earley recognizes that no language is static forever.  “Words and blood are the double helix that connect us to our past.”

You will want to make it a part of your Scots-Irish tradition brought from North Carolina on the wagon trains that wound their way into the mountains of eastern Kentucky.  So I invite you again to get the whole article and read it–pp. 80-85.   Then you too will find a sense of belonging.  Your favorite Kentucky genealogist, Arlene Eakle  http://arleneeakle.com

PS  Language can unlock the secrets of your heritage only as you study the history behind the words.  If you do, it will give new meaning to your ancestry.

PPS  I am getting ready to launch my Scots-Irish blog–stay tuned.

Virginia Land Records in Kentucky and Ohio

These records are not conveniently located in one archive with one index.  Nor are they complete, yet, online through one archive with one index.  They are scattered around–and they still exist.

Richard Clough Anderson Collection.Anderson was Registrar of the Virginia Land Office and his son-in-law, Allen Latham assisted him at Chillicothe, OH to 1822.

1. Illinois Historical Survey, University of Illinois, Urbana.  Ledger Book A (as written on spine and in archive inventory.)  Ledger Book 5, Cash Account Book, 1784-1799.  There is an alpha list of names with year and page # in “Virginia Land Grants in Kentucky and Ohio, 1784-99,” Clifford Neal Smith, National Genealogical Society Quarterly 61 (1973): 16-27. 10,000 items, large ledgers.  These include records from both the French and Indian Wars and the American Revolution.
2. Archives Division, Virginia Library, Richmond VA.  2,500 items.

Virginia Bounty-Land Warrants. Western Reserve Historical Society Collection, Cleveland OH, 5 linear feet of archival material, 4,000 warrants.

Virginia Land Office, Kentucky.  16,000 bounty-land warrants, Kentucky.  Land grants in the Virginia Military District of OH.  Published:  Kentucky Land Grants. 2 vols.  1925.  Willard Rouse Jillson, Filson Club Publications, #33-34 and Federal Land Series, Vol. IV:  Grants in the Virginia Military Land District. 1982-86.  Clifford Neal Smith,  American Library Association.  Also published Catalogue of Revolutionary Soldiers and Sailors of the Commonwealth of Virginia to Whom Bounty-Land Warrants were Granted for Virginia Military Services in the War for Independence. Edited by Samuel M. Wilson.  Reprint of 1913 Year Book of the Kentucky Society of the SAR and 1917 Year Bookof Society of Colonial Wars in Kentucky.  1994.  Southern Historical Press, PO Box 1267, Greenville SC 29602.  Includes new index and both warrants and surveys by bundle.

These documents have now been put online by the Kentucky State Archives:  http://www.sos.ky.gov/land/search/

Early Kentucky Land Records, 1773-1780.1992.  Neal O. Hammon.  Filson Club Publications.  A new readingof the original warrants, surveys, and military claims.  Using computer property-mapping software, Hammon also provides land ownership maps for these early claims.  Hammon has also written a series of articles on the early land records and settlers of Kentucky.

Kentucky Land Lotteries, 1789-1800.  Advertised in newspapers throughout the East, offered 40,000 acres for sale in 150-acre lots for $15.00 per ticket.

These compilations and original documents list watercourses, including the larger bodies of water into which smaller streams and rivers emptied.  You can coordinate this data with topographical maps showing exactly where the lands are located.  With a GPS system in your vehicle, you can navigate to the lands themselves.

The records provide the name of the grantee and identifying terms to separate and distinguish persons of the same name in the same set of records.  The clerk had to keep the men straight, and you can use the same key words to identify your ancestors in other records as well.

Many of  these records are also microfilmed so you can read the original words yourself.  This course of action I recommend whenever possible.  Some times misinterpretation of property description, spelling of surnames and locations can lead you astray.  Besides there is an excitement in the original records that cannot be duplicated by a printed extract. Your favorite Kentucky genealogist, Arlene Eakle  http://www.arleneeakle.com

Sources to document early Kentucky are rather extensive–most are available on microfilm which you can borrow from the Family History Library or from the archives and libraries in Kentucky or from the Mid-Continent Public Library Genealogy Section, Independence MO.  Let me describe two large collections:

1. The Draper Papers. Dr. Lyman Draper was the Director of the Wisconsin Historical Society.  He was determined to document the early settlement of what was called the Trans-Mississippi West–including Kentucky. Draper was at work when the Revolutionary War soldiers were still alive.  And when early settlers, although they were now elderly, could still be interviewed and questioned about where they came from, when they migrated into Kentucky, who came with them, where they settled, and what their lives were like.  These interviews and their accompanying questionnaires are invaluable for linking your ancestors to their kinship networks and places of origin.
2. Shane Collections. The Rev. John D. Shane was a Presbyterian minister and he saw his life’s work as compiling a complete history of the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky–including family histories of those families within the faith who settled early Kentucky.  Shane recorded the military engagements of the Scots-Irish Presbyterians, the local events they participated in, who they were related to, what contribution they made to the Presbyterian movement in America.  When Rev. Shane died, his collection survived in three separate and distinct sections:  1) The Presbyterian Historical Collection, Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort KY.  2) Shane Manuscript Collection, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia PA.  3) Shane Collection for Kentucky and Ohio, acquired by Dr. Lyman C. Draper and integrated into his work.

These men were contemporaries and knew each other fairly well.  They corresponded back and forth on mutual, historical and genealogical interests.  All the above collections, except the Presbyterian Historical Collection at the Kentucky Historical Society , can be borrowed on film to read wherever it is convenient for you.

See Arlene H. Eakle and Linda E. Brinkerhoff, Tennessee and Kentucky:  Twin Gateways to the South. 2007. (Genealogical Institute, PO Box 129, Tremonton UT 84337-0129).  Descriptions, microfilm reel numbers and contents, lists of family and congregation histories included in both men’s works are included.

In my opinion, the materials Draper and Shane collected are essential to identify Kentucky ancestors and trace them to their origins–in Virginia, in Maryland, in North Carolina, in South Carolina, and in Pennsylvania and points east.  Your favorite Kentucky genealogist, Arlene Eakle  http://www.arleneeakle.com

PS  Would you believe it?  Access to my TN blog is now blocked by Windows Security as a threat?  What happened?  I am in shock!  And I will keep you posted.

As I was studying Harriette Simpson Arnow’s book, Seedtime on the Cumberland, published some time ago by Macmillan Company of New York, I came across these paragraphs:

Many families in this general region (Upper Cumberland Valley), particularly up on the Big South Fork, have hand-me-down stories of Baptist ancestors who instead of stopping in East Tennessee or going down to Natchez, slipped into this part of Kentucky.  Still others tell of Tories, unable to escape to Canada, settled in some out of the way valley on a branch of the Cumberland.  There are, too, stories of forted farms and fights with Indians, but save for the depositions, given twenty-five to thirty years later, usually in connection with a lawsuit over land, little is known of the early history of the southeastern part of Kentucky drained by the Cumberland.

Lists of early land grants in Kentucky help not at all.  First, few Kentuckians had any knowledge whatever of the southern part of the state, and secondly, land grants were almost always located by water courses, but seldom did the surveyor and almost never did those who listed his work take the trouble to name the larger body of water into which the creek or branch flowed.  There was for example, a Stinking Creek of Cumberland and a Stinking Creek of Rockcastle…

The name of the grantee is not always of much help.  It was a small world with most of the early settlers on the Cumberland coming from a relatively small part of this world–southwestern Virginia and North Carolina.  Thus, many bore the same name.  Daniel Smith was, for example, a leading citizen of Middle Tennessee.  Contemporaneous with him over in East Tennessee was another Daniel Smith who made John Redd a pair of leather breeches.  John Buchanan was a first settler on the Cumberland, and his son John built a fort, while still another John Buchanan was killed in the Revolution.

I have taken the liberty of italicising specific problems with Kentucky research.  And early Kentucky research is a challenge–no question.  We do, however, live in the 21st century with tools and indexes and abstracts and knowledge of where the original records can be found which Ms Arnow did not have access to–although her research for this book is exceptional and her maps are extraordinary.

In the next blogs, I will address these problems with answers and solutions–so if you run into these specific challenges, you will have what you need to solve them.

1. Hand-me-down stories. Check out the DAR collection (on microfilm through your nearest Family History Center, call numbers available at FamilySearch.org. Then write the local public library genealogy collections in the areas where your ancestors reside for a check of their family files.  The correspondence in these files often recounts the stories.  Finally,  check the Kentucky Historical Society with the same request.  The secret of the Family Files is that few repositories sort their files–you will get all the Daniel Smiths and John Buchanans filed together.  You will be the one to sort them out–ensuring that you don’t miss out on the one that belongs to you.
2. Slipped into this part of Kentucky–Cumberland Valley.  The entre to the Cumberland Valley for most early ancestors was through eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia.  Still is.  Check out a current road map.  The flow of the mountains and the directions of the water courses and valleys is shown on most current road maps.  Compare with a topographical map from your nearest federal Map Store–or order the right section online.  A careful map study before you actually research is always a good idea–and a time-saver.
3. Tories who settled in out of the way valleys.  If your ancestor appears to have parachuted into a Kentucky County–with little track of their origins–search the Tory lists from the American Revolution for  North Carolina, first.  Don’t spin your wheels aimlessly checking local sources.  They hid their origins–it was illegal and treason to be a Tory!
4. Forted farms.  Virginia, the original jurisdiction for southeastern Kentucky, awarded 600 acres of land to any settler willing to build a fort or stockade for protection from the Indians and allowing neighbors to use this same safety station.   See Arlene H. Eakle and Linda E. Brinkerhoff, Kentucky, Volume I (Family History World, PO Box 129, Tremonton UT 84337 or online on my Home Page Catalog link) for a working list of early Kentucky stations  with lists of their settlers.  This is a list in progress with regular updates.  Lots of new information appears as I continue to research forted farms and stations.
5. Fights with Indians.  Military service in Kentucky was your ancestor’s day job!  He served at the fort or on muster or in the field for his shift.  Then went home to his family and farm when he was not on duty.  I am working on a list of early militias and soldiers who served at forts–official posts as well as stations.  I’ll keep you posted as I get the names together.
6. Lawsuits over land.  Kentucky created a big mess in land titles–your ancestor was most likely to be involved in one or more of these before he gave up and left the state for a better life in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, or Missouri.  And finally Kansas.   Overlapping land titles, unrecorded claims, land rights barred from descent to heirs–all these and more.  Stay tuned for where to look and how to use this evidence to your advantage.

Your favorite Kentucky genealogist, Arlene Eakle   http://www.arleneeakle.com

As part of my Genealogy News Sheet and my focus on genealogy evidence in that newsletter, there are 123 Posts on Kentucky or which include Kentucky in the sources described. 

If you type Kentucky into the Google search screen on my Genealogy Blog Home page, Google will list the 123 posts for you.  You can then choose by subject what I have already written.

My current publications list includes 3 Kentucky volumes–1) Kentucky Stations and Forts with name lists of early settlers; and 2) Early Marriages (before 1800) with maps and other Kentucky goodies.  And a NEW research guide to TN and KY:  Twin Gateways to the South.  I am also working on a Volume 3–watch for its announcement.

I do enough professional research in Kentucky that I have months of stuff to share with you–stuff that will make the difference with your hardest-to-find ancestors.  Stuff taken from the original manuscript records and printed sources currently available for Kentucky genealogy.

These research materials are aids to finding the birthplaces of ancestors where the census says only “Kentucky.”  Good searching.  And please stay tuned.  Your favorite Kentucky genealogist, Arlene Eakle  http://www.arleneeakle.com

PS  The challenge of connecting your ancestors from Kentucky into VA, MD, NC, SC, and PA just got easier!

As Adin Baber dug deeper! His research into the Hanks family eventually located the family Bible of “A. Lincoln, Springfield IL.”  There for all the world, and especially us, to see are the origins of Nancy Hanks:

Nancy Hanks, born 5 Feb 1784, Campbell County VA; died 5 Oct 1818.  Father:  Abraham Hanks.  Mother:  Sarah Harper.  She was the 6th child and only girl.  Her five older brothers were Abraham Hanks, Luke Hanks, William Hanks, George Hanks, and Fielding Hanks.

Nancy married Thomas Lincoln, 12 June 1806.  She was the mother of three children:  Sarah Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, and Thomas Lincoln.

Some years ago, a woman contacted me to connect her ancestor Sarah Hanks, to Nancy Hanks, the mother of  President Lincoln.  Her family tradition said they were sisters.  That is when I discovered Adin Baber and his work.

I went carefully through the many papers he collected, with the possibility that her Sarah Hanks was a cousin to Nancy and I suggested several searches that might prove the connection to be true.  Never heard the final results of the research–most of the time I don’t hear the results.

Just remember that when you dig deeper you have the greatest chance of finding the truth.  Bernie Gracey says, “The TRUTH is out there.  You just have to locate it.”  Your favorite Kentucky genealogist, Arlene Eakle  http://www.arleneeakle.com

PS  Review Part I of I, Too, Am a Kentuckian, for a discussion of the Nancys and the research that Adin Baber did.  Reference to the family Bible is buried in the fine print of Nancy Hanks:  The Destined Mother of a President–The Factual Story of a Pioneer Family as Revealed in an Exhaustive Study of Ancestral History. Printed for the author, Kansas IL 1963.

“I, too, am a Kentuckian,” Abraham Lincoln, born 12 Feb 1809, near Elizabethtown, Hardin County, Kentucky.

Most people do not write their own epitaphs.  The genealogical data and the verse on the tombstone art are submitted or chosen by relatives, friends, employees, government officials, cemetery personnel, or by well meaning historians and archivists.

Nancy Hanks Lincoln died 5 Oct 1818, age 35 years.  She is buried on Little Pigeon’s Creek, Spencer County, Indiana.  Her tombstone was placed their in 1879 by “a friend of her martyred son.” [A photo of the tombstone is in my possession. AE]

According to Olivia Coolidge, in her The Apprenticeship of Abraham Lincoln (New York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974), little is known of Nancy’s genealogy.   Little is known of Nancy herself:

In 1806 Thomas Lincoln married Nancy Hanks, who is said to have been able to read the Bible, though this seems unlikely, as she could not sign her name on documents…  It was Nancy who seized every chance to send her children to school. (p.3)

Of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, we can only say that she was the daughter of Lucy Hanks and probably illegitimate.  In any case, nothing definite is known about her father… Nancy Lincoln was dead so long before anyone cared to recall her that descriptions of her appearance differ widely. (p.2)

The pioneer farmers who built Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois left their dead behind them as they moved on, generally finding little to say to their sons about their forebears.  (p.2)

Too many genealogies are compiled without enough thorough research into family and home sources.  We pay lip service to the importance of this evidence, we make inquiries among those relatives we know, then we spend the rest of our time searching public records, trying to make the data fit what we think is true.  If we expended some effort to track down relatives unknown to us, who also have family resources and knowledge to share, we could resolve a lot of the missing data on our pedigrees.  And we could gather the documentation to prove the lineages.

Adin Baber, himself a Hanks descendant, devoted many years of his life tracking and interviewing Hanks descendants.  His list of relatives he personally talked to takes up several pages in his books on Nancy Hanks:

Nancy Hanks of Undistinguished Families:  A Genealogical, Biographical, and Historical Study of the Ancestry of the Mother of Abraham Lincoln. Kansas, IL:  by the author, 1960.

Nancy Hanks.  The Destined Mother of a President:  The Factual Story of a Pioneer Family as Revealed in an Exhaustive Study of Ancestoral History. Kansas IL:  by the author, 1963.  Sold exclusively by the Arthur H. Clark Company, Glendale CA (now located in Spokane WA).

When Baber began his research, there were many traditions and a substantial number of claims for “the Nancys” as he calls them.  He carefully tracked each Nancy and eliminated them one by one until there was only one left:

1. Nancy Hanks, known as Calhoun’s Nancy.  Daughter of Luke and Ann Hanks, born 10 Feb 1787 in South Carolina.  She died between 1833-1838.  Married to Mr. South, lived sometime in TN.
2. Nancy Hanks, known as Abraham Enloe’s Nancy.  Daughter of William Hanks, born about 1800 in Rutherford County NC.  Had an uncle Dickey.  Bore a son to Abraham Enloe about 1818,  also named Abraham.
3. Nancy Hanks.  Daughter of Argyle Hanks and his wife Frances Hargrove, born 5 Feb 1784, Granville County NC.  Hanks family originally from Virginia.  Strong tradition of being Lincoln’s mother.  She died unmarried in 1804, Granville NC.
4. Nancy Hanks, Dennis Friend Hanks’ Nancy.  Daughter of Joseph Hanks, born in Virginia.  Family moved to Nelson County KY.  Unwed mother of Dennis Friend Hanks, 1799.  Married Levy Hall.  Knew Thomas Lincoln; her son Squire Hall married the daughter of Sallie Bush Johnson, 2nd wife of Thomas Lincoln and step-mother of President Lincoln.  These people are buried beside Nancy Hanks Lincoln in Indiana.  [Coolidge quotes the 70-year-old Dennis Hanksas a cousin to President Lincoln in her work.]
5. Nancy Hanks.  Daughter of Mott Hanks and his wife Mary, born 21 June 1780, Dobbs County NC.  This Nancy had a sister Lucy.  The family later moved to Texas where this Nancy Hanks died.
6. Nancy Hanks.  Daughter of Fleetwood and Ruth Hanks, born in Loudoun County, Virginia.  She married 1) Enoch Holdron in 1805; 2) Frank DeMar.  She died 1870 in Phillips County AR.
7. Nancy Hanks.  Daughter of Jemima Hanks.  This Nancy married Peter Jones 16 Apr 1804, Henry County KY.
8. Nancy Hanks.  Daughter of William Hanks and Elizabeth Hall, born 13 Jan 1794, Kentucky.  Married William Miller.  Wove cloth for President Lincoln.  Her grandfather was Joseph Hanks.
9. Nancy Hanks.  Daughter of Joshua Hanks and Polly Renwick, born 30 Dec 1812.  Married William Morris, and had 9 children.  Died 17 Mar 1901, Sunbright TN.
10. Nancy Jane Hanks.  No details available, just the tradition that she belonged to the Hanks family.
11. Nancy Hanks resided with the Richard Berry, Sr. family.  Born ca. 1783 in Virginia.  Married Thomas Lincoln and died of milk fever, 5 Oct 1818, Spencer County IN.

All of the known Nancy Hanks who were born in the 1780’s and possibly could have married Thomas Lincoln–all are eliminated as candidates except one, and the nominated one fulfills all the requirements, viz:  She was born in Virginia, of a family of Hanks, she was an orphan and came to Kentucky with some of her kinfolks and not with her parents; she probably lived with the Richard Berry, Sr. family and with the Richard Berry, Jr. family.  She was kin to the Thompson family and to the Mitchell family, and a descendant of the Shipley family, and she did Marry Tom Lincoln. Adin Baber, Nancy Hanks of Distinguished Families, pp. 70-71.

Baber’s work is a model study in thorough home source research.  For there is no substitute for family knowledge–who actually married whom and what happened to them.  During the course of his research he collected family tradition and stories and published these accounts himself.

Nancy’s Portrait

From the various descriptions of Nancy, carried in the hearts of her descendants, a modern artist was commissioned to paint a portrait of the President’s mother in 1963.  Several people described her hands, jaw, ears, and eyes as being very like her son’s.  The collective family memory said she looked like Abe, only with long hair tied back in a bun. And that is how he painted her.

Photographs of the portrait were pasted on the fly leaf of Baber’s book.

For readers interested in any of the Nancy Hanks and their backgrounds, with the documentation to support Baber’s conclusions,there is a large cache of genealogy evidence awaiting you:

1. Baber’s notes and papers are deposited in the Illinois State Historical Library in Springfield IL at the Old State House.
2. The portrait of Nancy Hanks was in the possession of Nancy Baber McNeil, Box 394, Kansas IL 61933.
3. Seattle Public Library. There is also a very large collection of research notes and correspondence on the Hanks and Lincoln ancestry in the Seattle Public Library, 5th and Spring Street, Seattle WA.  Baber’s sister moved to Seattle to live with her daughter.  After her death, the daughter gave the rest of the archives to the public library Genealogy Room.

All of Baber’s research was completed before Olivia Coolidge wrote her book.   To my knowledge, no one researching Abraham Lincoln has consulted this  family data.  So the ancestral proof that did come from President Lincoln’s direct kinfolks is little known.

Family tradition and lore are alive and well in Kentucky.  To compile a Kentucky lineage without combing these resources seems folly to me.  Break your losing streak!  Your favorite Kentucky genealogist, Arlene Eakle http://www.arleneeakle.com