NANCY HANKS

Monograph by William H. Herndon (Lincoln's law partner in Springfield, IL)

Greencastle, Indiana, August 20, 1887

Dennis Hanks and all the other Hankses, their cousins and relatives call Nancy Hanks, Nancy Sparrow.  Why is she thus called Nancy Sparrow?  Lucy Hanks was her mother; Lucy, the mother of Nancy, married Henry Sparrow.  Nancy Hanks was taken and raised by Thomas and Betsey Sparrow.  Why did not her mother, Lucy Sparrow, keep and raise her own daughter?  Did Henry Sparrow object to the mother, his wife, keeping and raising her own daughter?  Dennis Hanks says to me this substantially (to be quoted word for word) in a letter written to me, dated February, 1866: "Don't call her Nancy Hanks because that would make her base-born."  Very well, Dennis, shrewd, sly Dennis.  It is a universal custom, habit, and a practical rule of all English-speaking people, including the American, as a matter of course, to call all illegitimate children after and from the mother's name, and not the father's name, because of the cruel fiction of the law that such children are supposed to be the children of no one, rather a vast presumption, I willingly admit.  If Henry Sparrow had been the father of Nancy Hanks, then she ought by law and justice to be called Nancy Sparrow, but unfortunately, Henry Sparrow, the husband of her mother, was not her father.

Nancy Hanks was born before her mother was married to Henry Sparrow.  How is this, Dennis?  Abraham Lincoln, always honest and truthful, says, substantially, under his own hand in a short Life of himself written at Springfield, Illinois, for Jesse W. Fell of Bloomington, Illinois, to be a kind a campaign biography of '60, this: "My mother's name is Nancy Hanks," or to put it exactly, Lincoln says in that short biography of himself written to Fell: "My mother, who died in my infancy, was of a family of the name of Hanks."  Why did he not say, if such was the truth, that she was of the family of the Sparrows? Simply because she was not of the Sparrow family.  Lincoln knew her origin but kept it to himself.  In that Fell biography I guess I can state what Lincoln himself states in the matter; and if to call her Hanks is to make her base-born, charge her son with the offense, not me.  Dennis, sly, shrewd Dennis, wishes to cover up the truth, smother up the sad fact, if it is such.  Lincoln boldly and truthfully speaks out, and now the question comes:  Who was the father of Nancy Hanks, Lincoln's mother?  Lucy Hanks, her mother, was never married to any Hanks so far as we can find out, nor to any other person before or after she married Henry Sparrow, or before she had Nancy.  When Nancy Hanks was born, who was Lucy Hanks's husband?  This is quite a pertinent question.  What did Lincoln say to Scripps, his campaign biographer?  No one need for this matter rely on what I say or have said, that Lincoln told me that his mother was illegitimate - he told me that his mother was an illegitimate child of a Virginia planter or large farmer.  However, the record tells its own story and speaks for itself and, had not the record spoken out, it is more than probable that I should have kept the secret forever, though I was not forbidden to reveal the fact after Lincoln's death.  I never uttered this to mortal man, directly or indirectly, till after the death of Lincoln.  And now again, who was the father of Nancy Hanks, the mother of the President of the United States?  Will some gentleman, some lady tell me?  The father of Nancy Hanks is no other than a Virginian planter, large farmer of the highest and best blood of Virginia, and it is just here that Nancy got her good rich blood, tinged with genius.  Mr. Lincoln told me that she was a genius and that he got his mind from her.  Nancy Hanks Lincoln was a woman of a very fine mind, an excellent heart, quick in sympathy, a natural lady, a good neighbor, a firm freind; good cheer and hilarity generally accompanied her, and had she been raised at all, she must have flourished anywhere, but as it was, she was rude, tough, breaking and having difficulty through all forms, conditions, customs, habits, etiquette of society.  She could not be held to forms and methods of things, and yet she was a fine woman naturally.  It is quite probable that a knowledge of her origin made her defiant and desperate; she was very sensitive, sad, sometimes gloomy; who will tell me the amount and influence of her feelings, in this matter, caused by the consciousness of her origin?  Let the world forgive her and bless her, is my constant prayer.

Lincoln often thought of committing suicide.  Why?  Did the knowledge of his mother's origin, or his own, press the thought of suicide upon him?  Who will weigh the force of such an idea as illegitimacy on man and woman, especially when that man or woman is very sensitive, such as Lincoln was?  God keep such people.