Letter from DENNIS HANKS

Sanitary Fair, Chicago, Ill., June 13, 1865

Dear Sir:

I received your letter dated the [?], asking eight or ten interrogations. I take great pleasure in answering it, question by question as each is put and in the order asked. The ancestors of Mr. Lincoln came from England about the year 1650. They first settled in Buckingham County in the State of Virginia and not in Pennsylvania as stated in Abraham Lincoln's biographies. The ancestors of the Lincoln family were Scotch English. Two men came over from England about 1650 -- one of these brothers was named Mordecai Lincoln and the other Thomas Lincoln, from whom the descendants derived their nature and their name. All died in Virginia. These two men were ironside Baptists. There was one of the children of these men who was named Mordecai -- the son of Thomas -- I know none of the children of Mordecai. I think that this Mordecai was the great-great-grandfather of Abraham Lincoln. He was born in the State of Virginia and died about 1700. Mordecai Lincoln was the grand-father of Abraham Lincoln, Mordecai Lincoln was the great-grand father of Abraham Lincoln. He was born in the State of Virginia. Abraham Lincoln, the son of Mordecai, came with his family from Virginia to Kentucky in about 1780 among the pioneers of Daniel Boone. He, Mordecai, died in Virginia. Mordecai was the father of Abraham's grandfather. Mordecai had six children, four boys and girls. The only one of his, Mordecai's sons I now remember was Abraham Lincoln, who was the grandfather of Abraham and the father of Thomas. He was killed by the Indians near Booneville, Kentucky, in ---- County....Abraham Lincoln, the grandfather of Abraham the President, had three sons --- Mordecai and Abraham and Thomas Lincoln, the last being the father of Abraham. All these sons and daughters scattered and went, some to Kentucky, some to North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, and Illinois. The Hanks family, of which I am one, was not connected with the Lincoln family till about 1808. Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's father, was born in the State of Virginia on the Roanoke. About 1775. Thomas Lincoln was six years old when his father was killed by the Indians. I wish to state one fact here about the killing of Thomas Lincoln [sic], Abraham's grandfather. In Kentucky all men had to clear out their own fields, cut down the trees, split them into rails, etc., and in putting on the last rail, the eighth on the fence, one Indian who had secreted himself shot Thomas Lincoln [sic]. Then the Indian ran out from his hiding place and caught Thomas, the father of Abraham; Mordecai, the oldest brother of Thomas and uncle of Abraham, jumped over the fence, ran to the post, shot the Indian through the pivot holes of the post, the Indian dropped Thomas, ran, and was followed by the blood the next day and found dead. In the flight he threw his gun in a tree top which was found. Mordecai said the Indian had a silver half-moon trinket on his breast at the time he drew his "bead" on the Indian, that silver being the mark he shot at. He said it was the prettiest mark he held a rifle on. So remains now of old Thomas Lincoln's children, boys three -- Mordecai, Thomas, and Silas. The children of Mordecai came to Sangamon; the children of Silas scattered -- some in Kentucky, some in Tennessee, some in North Carolina -- and Thomas Lincoln came to Indiana. There is Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's father, a young man; he, Thomas at the age of twenty-five was married to Nancy Sparrow, not Hanks as stated in the biographies of the day. Nancy Sparrow, Abraham's mother, was the child of Henry Sparrow. Henry Sparrow's wife was Lucy Hanks, Abraham's [mother's] mother. The stories going about, charging wrong or indecency, prostitution, in any of the above families is false and only got up by base political enemies and traitors to injure A. Lincoln's reputation, name and fame. Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's [father], was married to Nancy Sparrow about the year 1808 in Hardin County and State of Kentucky. Nancy Sparrow, the child of Henry Sparrow, married Thomas Lincoln when she was about twenty years of age; she was born in Mercer County, Kentucky. Thomas Lincoln was born in Virginia. Thomas Lincoln, the father of Abraham, owned about thirty acres in Hardin County, on a little creek called Knob Creek which empties into the Rolling Fork. He owned the land in fee simple. After the marriage of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Sparrow, say in three or four years, Abraham was born in that place. The cabin was a double one, with a passage or entry between. About the year 1813 or '14, as the volunteers of the War of 1812 were returning home, they came by Lincoln's house and he fed and cared for them by companies, by strings of them. I was a little boy at that time, Abraham was a little child, and Sarah, his sister and senior by two or three years, was then likewise living and a little girl. They had no other children -- cause, a private matter. It is said in the biographies that Mr. Lincoln left the State of Kentucky because and only because there was slavery there. This is untrue. He moved off to better his condition, to a place where he could buy land for his children and others at $1.25 per acre; slavery did not operate on him. I know too well his whole matter. Mrs. Lincoln, Abraham's mother, was five feet eight inches high, spare made, affectionate -- the most affectionate I ever saw -- never knew her to be out of temper, and thought strong of it. She seemed to be immovably calm; she was keen, shrewd, smart, and I do say highly intellectual by nature. Her memory was strong, her perception was quick, her judgment was acute almost. She was spiritually and ideally inclined, not dull, not material, not heavy in thought, feeling or action. Her hair was dark hair, eyes bluish green -- keen and loving. Her weight was one hundred thirty. Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's father was five feet ten inches high, very stoutly built, and weight 196 pounds; his hair dark, his eyes hazel. He was a man of great strength and courage, not one bit of cowardice about him. He could carry fatigue for any length of time, was a man of uncommon endurance. Mr. Lincoln's friends thought him the best man in Kentucky, and others thought that a man by the name of Hardin was a better man -- so the two men thought the influence of their friends met at a tavern in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. There the two men had a long and tedious fight and Lincoln whipped Hardin without a scratch. They did not fight from anger or malice but to try who was the strongest man, to try manhood. These two men were great good friends ever after. Thomas Lincoln, the father of Abraham, could beat his son telling a story, cracking a joke. Mr. Thomas Lincoln was a good, clean, social, truthful, and honest man, loving like his wife everything and everybody. He was a man who took the world easy, did not possess much envy. He never thought that gold was God and the same idea runs through his family. One day when Lincoln's mother was weaving in a little shed, Abe came in and quizzically asked his good mother who was the father of Zebedee's children; she saw the drift and laughed, saying: "Get out of here, you nasty little pup, you"; he saw he had got his mother and ran off laughing. About Abe's early education and his sister's education, let me say this: Their mother first learned them ABCs...She learned them out of Webster's old spelling book; it belonged to me and cost in those days 75 cents, it being covered with calfskin or suchlike covering. I taught Abe his first lesson in spelling, reading, and writing. I taught Abe to write with a buzzard's quill which I killed with a rifle and, having made a pen, put Abe's hand in mine and moving his fingers by my hand to give him the idea of how to write. We had no geese then, for the country was a forest. I tried to kill an eagle but it was too smart; wanted to learn Abe to write with that. Lincoln's mother learned him to read the Bible, study it and the stories in it and all that was moral and affectionate in it, repeating it to Abe and his sister when very young. Lincoln was often and much moved by the stories. This Bible was bought in Philadelphia about 1801 by my father and mother and was mine when Abe was taught to read in it. It is now burned together with all property, deeds, family and other records. This fire took place in Charleston, Coles County, Illinois, December 5, 1864; lost all I have; my wife died December 18, 1864. I was born in Hardin County, Kentucky, in 1799, May 15, on Nolan Creek near Elizabethtown. I was ten years older than Abraham and knew him intimately and well from the day of his birth to 1830; I was the second man who touched Lincoln after his birth, a custom in Kentucky then of running to greet the newborn babe. A man by the name of Hazel helped to teach Abraham his ABC, spelling, reading, and writing, etc. Lincoln went to school about three months with his sister, all the education he had in Kentucky. Parson Elkin, a preacher of the old Baptist religion, came to Mr. Thomas Lincoln and frequently preached in that neighborhood.

At about the year 1818 Thomas Lincoln, the father of Abraham, had a notion in his head: formed a determination to sell out his place and move to Indiana, then a new State, where he could buy land as said before at $1.25 per. He sold out to [undeciphered]. Mr. Lincoln got $300 and took it, the $300, in whisky. The thirty-acre farm in Kentucky was as knotty, knobby as a piece of land could be, with deep hollows, ravines, cedar trees covering the parts, knolls, knobs as thick as trees could grow. Lincoln's house was in a hollow of a high, tall, and peaky hill and boarded with cedar. Stood up against the sky all around. Mr. Lincoln as stated sold his farm for whisky. He cut down trees, made a kind of flatboat out of yellow poplar. He made the boat on the Rolling Fork at the mouth of Knob Creek, Hardin County, Kentucky, loaded his household furniture, his tools, whisky, and other effects, including pots, vessels, rifles, etc., etc., on the boat. He took no dogs, chickens, cats, geese, or other domestic animals. He floated on awhile down the Rolling Fork and upset and lost the most of the tools, etc., and some of his whisky. He went along by himself, not taking his family. From the Rolling Fork he ran into the Beach Fork and thence into the great Ohio. He landed at Thompson's Ferry at Posey's house or farm. He started out from the ferry in search of a place and found one and located it by making blazes, brush heaps, etc., to make a location, which he afterwards bought at $2.00 per acre, purchased it under the $2.00 act. This was an eighty-acre tract, and Mr. Lincoln, not being able to pay for it, lost his $80, which he paid to the government and which the government kept and has today. When he had cornered the land, blazed it off, marked the boundaries, he proceeded on horseback, with his own food and his horse's fodder behind him, to Vincennes, where he paid the $2.00 per acre as stated before. Mr. Lincoln never owned the land, more than a kind of pre-emption right, and sold it when he moved to Illinois. I fared like him in all these particulars. He then returned to the State of Kentucky from Spencer County, Indiana, then Perry County, since divided as Hardin County, Kentucky, was, as Sangamon County. From the old homestead in Kentucky, Hardin, now LaRue County, Thomas Lincoln, Nancy -- father and mother of Sarah and Abe -- the two children, and two feather beds, clothing, etc., mounted two horses and went back to Spencer County, then Perry County, Indiana, where said land was located on a little creek called Pigeon Creek, about north of the Ohio and about seventy miles northwest of Hardin County, Kentucky, and across and north of the Ohio. They had no wagons, no dogs, cats, hogs, cows, chickens, or suchlike domestic animals. Abe was at this time seven years of age. Abe read no books in Kentucky. Abe was a good boy, an affectionate one, a boy who loved his father and mother dearly and well, always minding them well. Sometimes Abe was a little rude. When strangers would ride along and up to his father's fence, Abe always, through pride and to tease his father, would be sure to ask the stranger the first question, for which his father would sometimes knock him a rod. Abe was then a rude and forward boy. Abe, when whipped by his father, never balked, but dropped a kind of silent unwelcome tear, as evidence of his sensations or other feelings. The family landed at Thompson's Ferry on the Ohio and over the Kentucky side, crossed the Ohio, and landed at Posey's farm on the Indiana side. Hence, seventeen miles northwest of the ferry. I went myself with them backwards and forwards to Indiana and back to Kentucky and back to Indiana, and know the story and all the facts well. We all started from Kentucky in September 1818 and was three or four days to the ferry and one day from the ferry out to the place of location. Here they stopped, camped, erected a little two-face camp open in front, serving a momentary purpose. Lincoln saw a wild turkey near the camp on the second day after landing, and Mrs. Lincoln, Abe's good mother, loaded the gun. Abe poked the gun through the crack of the camp and accidentally killed one, which he brought to the camp house. Thomas Lincoln then went on getting trees for the logs of his house, cutting down the brush and underwood, Indiana then being a wilderness and wholly a timberous country. I assisted him to do this, to cut timber, haul logs, etc., and helped him erect his log cabin, a camp, one story high, just high enough to stand under, no higher. This took only one day. Abe could do little jobs, such as carry water, go to the springs, branches, etc., by digging for water which was got by hills. This was a temporary affair. This was in 1818. We, Lincoln's family, including Sally and Abe and myself, slept and lodged in this cabin all winter and till next spring. We in the winter and spring cut down brush, underwood, trees, cleared ground, made a field of about six acres, on which we raised our crops. We all hunted pretty much all the time, especially so when we got tired of work, which was very often, I will assure you. We did not have to go more than four or five hundred yards to kill deer, turkey, and other wild game. We found bee trees all over the forests. Wild game and meat were our food. We ate no wild locust, like John the Baptist. We had to go to the Ohio River seventeen miles to mill, and when we got there the mill was a poor concern; it was a little bit of hand horse mill, the ground meal of which a hand could eat as fast as it was ground. Yet this was a Godsend. The mill was close to Posey's. The country was wild, full of game, dense with vegetation, swampy. We could track a bear, deer, wolf, or Indian for miles through the wild matted pea vines. Indians, wild bears, wolves, deers, were plenty. We had no trouble with the Indians in Indiana; they soon left westward. In the fall and winter of 1819-20 we commenced to cut the trees, clear out the brush and underwoods and forest for our new grand old log cabin, which we erected that winter; it was one story, eighteen by twenty feet, no passage, one window, no glass in it. The lights were made from the leaf coming off from the hog's fat. This was good and mellow light and lasted well. The house was sufficiently high to make a kind of bedroom overhead, a loft. This was approached by a kind of ladder made by boring holes in the logs forming [undeciphered] one side of the house, and this peg over peg we climbed aloft, the pegs creaking and screeching as we went. Here were the beds; the floor of the loft was clapboards, and beds lay on this. Here I and Abe slept, and I was married there to Abe's stepsister, Miss Elizabeth Johnston, not Johnson. During this fall Mrs. Lincoln was taken sick with what is known as the milk sickness; she struggled on day by day, a good Christian woman, and died on the seventh day after she was taken sick. Abe and his sister did some work, little jobs, errands, and light work. There was no physician nearer than thirty-five miles. She knew she was going to die and called the children to her dying side and told them to be good and kind to their father, to one another, and to the world, expressing a hope that they might live as they had been taught by her to love men, love, reverence and worship God. Here in this rude house, of the milk sickness, died one of the very best women in the whole race, known for kindness, tenderness, charity, and lover to the world. Mrs. Lincoln always taught Abe goodness, kindness, read the good Bible to him, taught him to read and to spell, taught him sweetness and benevolence as well. From this up to 1821 Mr. Lincoln lived single, Sarah cooking for us, she then being about fourteen years of age. We still kept up hunting and farming it. Mr. Lincoln, Abe's father, was a cabinet-maker and house-joiner, etc.; he worked at this trade in the winter at odd times, farming it in the summer. We always hunted; it made no difference what came, for we more or less depended on it for a living, nay for life. We had not been long at the log cabin before we got the usual domestic animals, known to civilization. These were driven out from near the Ohio River or hauled in a cart pulled by one yoke of oxen. Mrs. Lincoln was buried about one-fourth of a mile from the log cabin and the Baptist Church; the pastor was Lamon. Abraham learned to write so that we could understand it in 1821. David Elkin of Hardin County, Kentucky, called Parson Elkin, whose name has been mentioned before, paid a visit. I do not think Elkin came at the solicitation of the church to which Mr. Lincoln belonged. Abe was now twelve years old. Elkin came over to Indiana in about on year after the death of Mrs. Elkin and preached a funeral sermon on the death of Mrs. Lincoln. Parson Elkin was a good, true man and the best preacher and finest orator I ever heard. I have heard his words distinctly and clearly one-fourth of a mile. Some little time before this funeral service he, Thomas Lincoln, went to Kentucky and married Johnston, whose maiden name was Bush. When Thomas Lincoln married her, she had three children, two daughters and one son. The family came to Indiana with their stepfather and their mother. There was now five children in the family, Sarah and Abe Lincoln, Elizabeth, John D., and Mathilda Johnston. I married Elizabeth. I was just twenty-one; she was fifteen. Thomas Lincoln now hurried his farming, his calling and business, always remember hunting. Now at this time Abe was getting hungry for books, reading everything he could lay his hands on. The marriage of Thomas Lincoln and the widow Johnston was in 1821, Abraham now being twelve years old. Webster's old spelling book, the Life of Henry Clay, Robinson Crusoe, Weem's Life of Washington, Aesop's Fables, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress -- I do not say that Lincoln read these books just then, but he did between this time and 1825. He was a constant and I may say stubborn reader, his father having sometimes to slash him for neglecting his work by reading. Mr. Lincoln, Abe's father, often said: "I had to pull the old sow up to the trough," when speaking of Abe's reading and how he got to it then; and now he had to pull her away. From the time of the marriage of Thomas Lincoln and Mrs. Johnston, Mrs. Lincoln proved an excellent stepmother. When she came into Indiana, Abe and his sister was wild, ragged and dirty. Mrs. Lincoln had been raised in Elizabethtown in somewhat a high life; she soaped, rubbed and washed the children clean, so that they looked pretty, neat, well, and clean. She sewed and mended their clothes, and the children once more looked human as their own good mother left them. Thomas Lincoln and Mrs. Lincoln never had any children, accident and nature stopping things short. From 1820 to 1825 Mr. Lincoln and Mrs. Lincoln each worked ahead at their own business: Thomas at farming, cabinet-making, hunting; she at cooking, washing, sewing, weaving, etc., etc. About the year 1825 or 1826 Abe borrowed, of Josiah Crawford, Ramsey's Life of Washington, which got spoiled as specified generally in the President's life and paid as therein described: he pulled fodder at 25 cents per day to pay for it. He worked three or four days. Abe was then growing to be a man and about fifteen or sixteen years of age. He was then just the same boy in every particular that he subsequently exhibited to the world from 1831 to the time of his death. At this early age he was more humorous than in after life, full of fun, wit, humor, and if he ever got a new story, new book, new fact or idea, he never forgot it. He was honest, faithful, loving truth, speaking it at all times, and never flinching therefrom. Physically he was a stout, powerful boy, fat, round, plump, and well made as well as proportioned. This continued to be so up to the time he landed in Salem, Sangamon County. In 1825 or 1826 he then exhibited a love for poetry and wrote a piece of humorous rhyme on his friend Josiah Crawford that made all the neighbors, Crawford included, burst their sides with laughter. I had it; was lost in the fire. He was humorous, funny, witty, and good-humored at all times. Sarah married a man Aaron Grigsby; she married him in 1822 and died in about twelve months in chldbirth. About 1826 and 7, myself and Abe went down to the Ohio and cut cordwood at 25 cents per cord and bought stuff to make each a shirt. We were proud of this. It must have been about this time that Abe got kicked by a horse in the mill, and who did not speak for several hours and when he did speak, he ended the sentence which he commenced to the horse, a I am well informed and believe. From the last period 1825-6 and 7, Lincoln was constantly reading, writing, cipher[ing] a little in Pike's Arithmetic. He excelled any boy I ever saw, putting his opportunities into conversation. He then some[how] had or got Barclay's English Dictionary, a part of which I have now and which can be seen now at my house and which I am to give to W.H. Herndon of the city of Springfield. During these years the sports of Mr. Lincoln were hunting, shooting squirrels, jumping, wrestling, playing ball, throwing the mall overhead. The story about his carrying home a drunken man is not true as I think or recollect. He was good enough and tender enough and kind enough to have saved many a man from evil, wrong, difficulties, or damnation. Let him claim nothing but what is true. Truth and justice and mankind will make him the great of the world; he needs no fictions to back him. Lincoln sometimes attempted to sing but always failed, but while this is true he was harmony and time and sound. He loved such music as he knew the words of. He was a tricky man and sometimes when he went to log-house raising, corn shucking, and suchlike things he would say to himself and sometimes to others: "I don't want these fellows to work any more," and instantly he would commence his pranks, tricks, jokes, stories, and sure enough all would stop, gather around Abe, and listen, sometimes crying and sometimes bursting their sides with laughter. He sometimes would mount a stump, chair, or box and make speeches -- stories and stories, anecdotes and suchlike things; he never failed here. At this time Abe was somewhat [undeciphered] he was now as well as before a kind of forward boy and sometimes forward too when he got stubborn; his nature went an entire revolution. One thing is true of him -- always was up to 1830 when our intimacy ended, because he went to Sangamon and I went to Coles County -- he was ambitious and determined, and when he attempted to excel man or boy his whole soul and his energies were bent on doing it, and he in this generally almost always accomplished his ends. From these years 1826 and '27 what has been said of other years is applicable up to 1830 -- working, chopping, toiling, woman, child, and man. The plays and sports were the same. In 1829 (March) Thomas Lincoln moved from Spencer County, Indiana, and landed in Macon County, Illinois, ten miles west of Decatur. In that spring and summer the log cabin which I now have on exhibition at the Sanitary Fair in Chicago was erected. Lincoln helped cut the log; so did John Hanks. Abe hauled them and I hewed them all and raised it the next day we raised the cabin. Abraham and his neighbors had a mall railing party 1830, and he and they then split the rails to fence the ten acres of land were broken up into the place. This was on the north fork of Sangamon River in Mercer County, Illinois. Lincoln was twenty years of [age] when he left Indiana, not twenty-one -- as said in the books. In the fall of 1830 he went down the Sangamon, he then being twenty-one years of age, with John Hanks in a boat of some kind.

I now have told you all I recollect and think worthy of being told. I hope this will put history right, as I have taken time to reflect and to refresh my memory by conversations, times of well-authenticated date, by record, friends, and papers. All of which I do hereby certify to be true in substance, time, and fact, knowing what is said to be true personally as I was an actor pretty much all my life in the scene.

Your friend,

D. F. Hanks.