The Legend of a Mountain Girl and
her Baby By
Helen Campbell
I've listened to discussions, watched the History Channel on
television and read books that claim the sixteenth president
of the United States of America; Abraham Lincoln was of
Melungeon ancestry.
It is generally accepted by most Melungeons researchers that
Lincoln's Melungeon ancestry comes through the linage of his
mother, Nancy Hanks. He inherited a dark complexion, course,
black hair, and grey eyes all of which is consistent with
the physical features of the Melungeons. Judging from a Picture of Nancy Hanks Lincoln (drawn by Lloyd
Ostendorf), Lincoln does resemble his mother. Abraham
Lincoln also inherited color blindness. One day he told his
mother that he could not see things like other people.
The word Melungeon is a controversy in its self but the
truth is finally emerging after centuries of silence by an
oppressed people known as the Melungeons. Over the past two
decades scholars such as archeologists, linguists,
anthropologists, genealogist, historians and even scientists
have taken on the task of piecing this unsolved Melungeon
puzzle together. I know you are probably asking yourself,
what on earth is a Melungeon? I've been there and asked that
very same question too.
National Genealogy Society Newsletter
In 1996, I read in the National Genealogy Society
Newsletter, about a newly acquired book named "The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People. An
Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in America “by N. Brent
Kennedy, Mercer University Press, First Edition, 1994. I
borrowed the book through the National Genealogy Society's
Library loan service. Brent Kennedy, a man living in Wise,
Virginia, was compelled to write a book after he became
seriously ill in 1988, with a Mediterranean disease. He was
told his ethnic origin was Scot Irishman and German. He
wondered how a Mediterranean disease could afflict him, a
white European man. Publishing his theories and family's
genealogy brought him unsympathetic criticism, from his
family members, scholars and strangers too.
Brent Kennedy's theories on the ethic origins of his people,
the Melungeons, are that they are remnants from sixteenth
century Turkish, Portuguese, Spanish, Arab and Jewish
settlers, slaves, and captives that intermarried with the
Native American Nations and lived throughout the Southeast.
He wrote that his people, the Melungeons, were made to move
off their lands, denied their rights to vote and was forced
into isolation and almost exterminated. All these things
gradually concealed his people's very existence. After
centuries of trying to blend in with their white neighbors,
the Melungeons lost their heritage, culture, and even their
religion. But his family's distinct Melungeon physical
features remained, along with the Mediterranean diseases. To
learn more about the ethnic makeup of the Melungeons, read
"Ties That Bind – Revisited," by
Brent Kennedy.
The Melungeon DNA Surname Project
The Melungeon DNA Surname Project by Dr. Elizabeth
Hirschman and Dr. Donald Panther Yates state that Abraham
Lincoln was of Jewish ancestry. Dr. Hirschman writes "The
DNA sample we have came from a Berry male from Tennessee
whose ancestors had arrived in Virginia. The marriage of
Abraham Lincoln's parents was performed in the home of a
Berry (and not a church) suggesting that not only the
Lincolns, but also the Berry's were of Jewish descent. We
believe that many of the very earliest settlers who came to
North America from England were actually Sephardic Jews."
Dr. Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman is a native of Kingsport,
Tennessee. She is a graduate of Georgia and Georgia State
University where she earned her BA, MBA and PHD degrees.
Currently she is a Professor in the Business School at
Rutgers University in New Jersey, and the author of quite a
few academic articles, papers and books. Hirschman became
intrigued with the Melungeons after stumbling across Brent
Kennedy's book about Melungeons while at the Atlanta
airport. She soon discovered that she and Brent Kennedy are
cousins. Dr. Hirschman learned more truth about her
Melungeon ancestry after spending two and a half years
reading over two-hundred books about history and religion.
Dr. Hirschman learned that she has Melungeon ancestors on
both her maternal and paternal lines. Her passionate
research led her through hundreds of genealogies and
collecting DNA samples from over 20 people in her own
ancestry. In August 2004 she presented all her conclusions
to the Society for Crypto-Jewish Studies. The organization
accepted her findings and also introduced her to the larger
community of “lost” Sephardic Jews.
Mercer University Press has recently released a book
by Elizabeth Hirschman,
Melungeons: The Last Lost Tribe in America.
Dr. Hirschman and Dr. Yates announced at the 2004
Melungeon Heritage Association's Fourth Union Gathering,
that some Melungeons are descended from Sephardic Jews.
Through DNA testing Dr. Yates and Dr. Hirschman learned they
had a common ancestor making them distant cousins. Dr. Yates
can trace his ancestry to Choctaw-Cherokee Indians. To
learn more about this fascinating Jewish American Indians
revelation please refer to
"You Will Never Find the Truth,"
While a college professor at Georgia Southern University Dr.
Yates founded the first custom DNA ancestry report company.
DNA Consulting is the only commercial ancestry company
staffed by professional historians and owned and operated by
American Indians. In September 2004 he moved DNA Consulting
to Sante Fe, New Mexico. Dr. Yates is quoted as saying "DNA
testing is a great way to get past brick walls, to verify
oral traditions like crypto-Judaic family roots or to
explore Native American ancestry and tribal affiliation."
Theodore Roosevelt Connection to Lincoln's DNA
The coffin itself has been opened 5 times: December 21,
1865, September 19, 1871, October 9, 1874, April 14, 1887,
and September 26, 1901.
In 1876 thieves tried to steal the remains and hold them for
ransom. Abraham Lincoln's coffin has been moved 17 times,
mostly due to numerous reconstructions of the Lincoln Tomb
and fears for the safety of the President’s remains. In 1900
Lincoln's coffin was buried in a huge cage 10 feet deep and
then encased in four thousand pounds of concrete to prevent
another attempt to rob the grave.
(SOURCE: p. 61 of the Abraham Lincoln Fact Book and
Teacher’s Guide by Gerald Sanders).
All this was done at the request of Robert Lincoln the son
of President Lincoln. No doubt he had much anxiety over the
safety of his father's remains. Today the remains of Lincoln
are within a huge solid block of concrete, thus we can never
exhume Abraham Lincoln's remains for DNA analysis. However
sealed away in a ring is a lock of President Lincoln's
course black hair.
President Theodore Roosevelt wore a ring containing a lock
of Abraham Lincoln's hair when he was inaugurated in 1905.
Sealed within this tiny lock of hair is the maternal DNA of
President Abraham Lincoln. Where this ring survives today is
not known to me?
Bennett Greenspan is the founder and CEO of
Family Tree DNA, the company that is involved
with the Melungeon DNA Surname Project. Family Tree DNA has
Hanks DNA Surname Project and a
Lincoln DNA Surname Project.
I asked Mr. Greenspan if the hair in the ring could be used
to trace Lincoln's maternal ancestry. This is what is told
me: "Anything old suffers from DNA degrading. Also contamination is the
biggest issue...worse then the prior point."
"For those two reasons we don't test anything that has been
laying around we have tried but bitter failure has convinced
me that it just doesn't work when someone has been dead for
any length of time unless you have a bone (like from the
hip) and we probably can't get one of those!"
Can Nancy Hanks Melungeon Ancestry Be Proved or Disproved?
I have spent the last five months researching Nancy Hanks
and have found thousands of web pages and books devoted to
the ancestry of Nancy Hanks Lincoln. One accepted fact about
Nancy Hanks Lincoln is she passed away in Illinois when she
was about thirty-five in the year 1818. Her life was short
and tragic. Yet at the same time, she left behind a great
gift that changed the world. One common theory suggests that
Nancy was orphaned at an early age and went to live with
different relatives during her childhood. Some writings read
that Nancy's father was killed by Indians in Virginia one
year after her mother passed away. I read a couple of web
sites that the parents of Nancy Hanks were cousins and the
noble gentleman was a ruse to hide the fact.
Nancy Hanks and Tom Lincoln's marriage bond states that
Richard Berry was the legal guardian of Nancy Hanks. They
were married in Washington County, Kentucky at the Berry
home. What amazes me is the fact that it appears that Nancy
Hanks Lincoln's ancestry is still a mystery that can not be
proved nor disproved to this very day. However, I am
presenting the following extracts from two different
sources. Perhaps there is a paper trail somewhere out there
waiting to be found. Only time and careful study will reveal
the unanswered questions about President Abraham Lincoln's
maternal ancestry.
·
MD Genealogical Society Bulletin, Vol. 35, No. 2,
Departments : Letters to the Editor
Page 305
"Conrad and Joseph dies in Frederick, but Jacob moved to
Hampshire County, Virginia where he died in 1798, this in a
log cabin and on land purchased from a money lender from
Washington County, Maryland. The previous owner of the
property, Joe Hanks, had lost it on a mortgage to the
seller. While living in the cabin an unmarried daughter,
Lucy Hanks, gave birth to a baby girl named Nancy. Joe Hanks
took his family to Kentucky where the girl Nancy grew up.
She married Tom Lincoln and they became the parents of
Abraham Lincoln, our 16th President. The cabin and land
stayed in the possession of Jacob Doll's descendants for 100
years. The State of West Virginia has erected a replica of
the original cabin together with the history as related
above. It stands in a State Park. Thought the above might be
a matter of interest. Charles E. Doll, 703 Shore Club Drive,
St. Clair Shores, MI 48080
A Mountain Girl and her Baby
I located an interesting book at the at the Historic
Pittsburgh digital library. The name of the book is
Not far from Pittsburgh : places and personalities in the
history of the land beyond the Alleghenies by Clarence
E. Macartney. The book has a chapter about Lucy Hanks, the
maternal grandmother of Abraham Lincoln. The essay was
originally published in Pittsburgh, Pa.: The Gibson Press in
1936.
The Historic Pittsburgh digital library is a great website
that permits access to historic material held by the
University of Pittsburgh's
University Library System, the Library & Archives
of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania at the
Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center, and
the
Carnegie Museum of Art.
A Mountain Girl and her Baby
By Clarence Edward Noble
1879-1957
Frostburg, Maryland, is one hundred miles from
Pittsburgh. That was far away one hundred years ago,
but it is not far now. At Frostburg, leave the
National Road and go with me southward into West
Virginia. Soon we find ourselves in a sequestered,
well-water country called the Patterson Creek
Valley. Repeated inundations have laid down a rich
soil, and flouring farms are to be found in the
bottom lands near the river. The houses are not so
lordly as those on the east side of the mountains in
the far-famed Valley of Virginia; but here and there
is a house of distinction, brick or stone, with
sloping lawns and umbrageous maples and elms which
witness to coolness and peace.
We leave this valley and pursue our journey over the
hills to the west until we come to Antioch, a tiny
hamlet which sprang up long, long ago, where the
road turns sharply southward to cross a murmuring
brook. Antioch looks as if it had been trying to die
for a long time. No doubt it was a church of the
wilderness probably Baptist, which gave these
unpainted crossroads houses and stores the name of
the once golden and glorious city on the far-off
Orontes, where the "disciples were first called
Christians," and where the golden-mouthed Chrysostom
stirred the multitudes with his apocalyptic
preaching. Three miles beyond Antioch we come to
another little stream, and crossing it we turn to
the north, passing now through a wooded glen, where
cool gray rocks jut out from among the trees on the
hillside. Now the road leaves the forest ravine, and
we come to a farm which lies along the hillside. We
shall open this gate and follow the lane as it winds
along the shoulder of the hill.
The lane brings us to another farm where an old man
and his wife are milking in the barnyard and we can
hear as we pass the music of the milk as it is drawn
from the swelling udders into the bucket. An
impudent little black-nosed lamb comes prancing and
frisking at us as we go up by the house to a little
knoll where a huge millstone lies on the grass. Sit
down now by my side on this millstone, and as we
breathe in the cool, clean air and look off toward
the Gap, through which we can see far away the dim
line that marks the rampart of the Blue Ridge, the
eastern wall of the Valley of Virginia, let me tell
you the sad, but wonderful story of a mountain girl
and her baby.
About the year 1782, a Virginia farmer settled in
the Patterson Creek region, and when he had made a
clearing on the mountain side built a log cabin for
his wife Nancy Shipley, and their eight children.
The names of the four daughters were Betsy, Polly,
Nancy, and Lucy. Lucy is the one about whom I want
to tell you.
Lucy then a girl of nineteen, full-breasted and
lissome, and with magic in her eyes, did the usual
work that fell to the frontier girl. She milked the
cows, churned, stirred the apple butter, dipped the
tallow, dried the fruit, smoked the hams, and spun
the wheel, and all the while womanhood was running
at the flood in her veins. She was well past the age
at which most mountain girls married; but suitors
were tew, and those few were not to Lucy's liking.
Save an occasional quilting party, a funeral, a barn
raising, or the Sabbath day services at Antioch
Church, Lucy and her sisters saw little of what lay
beyond their farm. They were not far off the
traveled way, and few ever turned aside to visit the
mountain farm. But one evening, on a late September
day, a stranger got down from his horse before the
cabin and asked if he might spend the night. Lucy's
father made him welcome, put up his horse in the
barn, and after he had washed at the spring invited
him up to sit down to supper with the family.
That night as they lay on their cornhusk mattresses
in the loft, Lucy and her sisters, who had never
seen a Virginia gentleman before, talked eager
whispers about the fine-looking stranger who was
sleeping so near to them on the other side of
the loft partition.
The stranger's business kept him in the neighborhood
for several days. He had not failed to note the
attractive, dreamy face of Lucy and her beautifully
molded body as she drew water out of the deep well,
with the September sun glinting in her light brown
hair, or sat on the stool to milk, with her brow
pressed deep into the soft flank of the cow. One
night as they sat about the table eating the
fragrant bacon, the corn-bread, and the fried
apples, there was a strange light, of sadness,
mystery, and dread, in Lucy's eyes, as if she has
tasted deeply of both the Tree of Knowledge and the
Tree of Life.
The next morning when breakfast was over, the
stranger's horse was brought up from the barn, and
he swung himself gracefully into the saddle and was
off down the lane, homeward bound. Just before the
crimsoning forest swallowed him up, he turned and
waved a farewell. The family went back to their
tasks, the sisters to the cabin, the men to the barn
and the fields, but Lucy stood gazing toward the Gap
which opened to the southeast, and on her heart and
on her lips was the unspoken question, Will he ever
return? Late September now. When the laurel bloomed
in May, that would be the time, But would he ever
come?
As the first weeks and months passed, Lucy tried her
best to hide what soon could not be hid. Had he been
some mountain yokel, it might have gone hard with
Lucy; but sine he was an aristocratic Virginia
planter, though none knew his name, Lucy's distress
was mitigated by the feeling that her association
with the tidewater gentleman has, in a way,
conferred distinction upon her family.
At the interval between the morning and afternoon
sermons at the Antioch church, at the corn husking,
the barn raising, and the funeral, the country folk
whispered to one another. But who the father was
save that he was a Virginia gentleman none knew.
While the neighbors talked and whispered about Lucy
pondered it all in her heart. Perhaps, she often
said to herself, before the baby comes, he will
return. But the autumn days faded into winter; the
trees were stark and stripped, and snow lay on the
ridge, and the valley stream was covered with ice,
and the cold wind came howling up the Gap; winter
passed into spring; the Judas trees were in bloom on
the hillside, their red flowers contrasting with the
white and pink of the apple trees, and the birds
came back from the Southland; but Lucy's lover did
not come.
While Lucy waited and hoped against hope, nature
went steadily forward with her mysterious creation.
There were two places where Lucy liked best to be,
and where she found the most comfort. One was the
barnyard, where she pressed her lovely head into the
lank of the cow as she drew milk from the udders
into the pail. The other was the knoll back of the
cabin, where she could sit and gaze through the Gap
toward that unknown world whence her lover has come
and into which he had vanished again. Sometimes she
would go there to watch the sun rise, and when the
moon was at full of yearning, passion, and
compassion.
It was a lovely morning in late May, 1783, and the
mountain laurel was in bloom, and the brook in the
meadow was running at the flood, when Lucy lay down
for her great hour. In a day or two, as was the
habit of the mountain women, she was up again and at
her old tasks in the cabin or at the barn, but often
turning from her work to look down with sad,
dreaming, yet happy, eyes upon the babe where she
lay in her chestnut cradle, She was called Nancy
after Lucy's mother. Just another baby, and that by
nature's back door. But, Lucy, guard carefully and
tenderly that babe of thine, for Destiny hath put
its hand upon her brow!
Lucy's Nancy was now a girl of seven years when the
family took the Wilderness Trail for Kentucky. There
Lucy, her charms increased, rather than diminished
by maternity, married. It would have been awkward
for a bride to bring a little girl of her own to her
husband's home and Nancy was sent off to live with
her aunt Betsy Sparrow.
By and by, the baby girl Nancy, was a young woman. A
kind-hearted, roving carpenter, whom they knew as
Tom, took a liking to Nancy, with her corn silk hair
and her blue eyes, and her quiet meditative ways,
and asked her to marry him. They were married on
June 12, 1806, by Deacon Jesse Head, and after the
rough and lewd celebrations which then accompanied
frontier marriage, and the "infare," they went into
housekeeping in Elizabeth, known as "E-town." The
next February Nancy gave birth to her first child,
whom she named Sarah. In 1808 Nancy and her husband
and her babe removed to the cabin on Sinking Creek.
Early on the cold morning of February 12, 1809,
Carpenter Tom left the cabin on Sinking Creek and
walked two miles up the road to the Sparrows cabin.
When the door opened, Tom said in his slow drawl,
"Betsy Sparrow, Nancy's got a boy baby!" Betsy went
at once to Tom's cabin, where she found Nancy and
her babe lying on the mattress. She washed the babe,
wrapped it in a yellow flannel petticoat, cooked
dried berries and wild honey for Nancy, straightened
things up about the cabin, and went home again. That
was all the nursing Nancy and her baby had. It was
all she expected.
Carpenter Tom decided that he could better his lit,
and in 1816 migrated across the Ohio to Indiana and
settled on the Pigeon Creek, where afterward arose
the village of Gentreyville. But times were hard
there, too, and the cabin on Pigeon Creek was just
as plain and bare and comfortless as the cabin on
Sinking Creek. On October, in 1818, when the leaves
of the forest had turned to red and gold, Nancy,
down with "milk sick" which was ravaging the
settlement, called her two children to her bedside,
and putting her hand on the head of the youngest,
now in an awkward, homely lad of nine years, said,
"Abraham, I'm going on a long journey, and I will
not return. I want you to remember what I have
taught you. Be a good boy; be kind to your father
and Sarah and love God." The faded, worn,
thin-breasted Nancy, having done all for her
children she could, closed her eyes on a world which
she had entered thirty-five years before on the
mountain farm at Antioch, Va., and where she had
known little but toil and sorrow. Carpenter Tom, his
boy helping him, cut down a tree, hollowed out a
coffin, folded Nancy's hands over her breast in the
coffin, and buried her on a little knoll under a
shade of some oak trees. Today, if you visit that
grave under the oak trees on the knoll near Pigeon
Creek in southern Indiana, you can read on the
headstone of a grave these words:
"Nancy Hanks
Mother of President Lincoln
Died Oct 5th, A. D. 1818
Aged 35 years
Erected
By A Friend of Her Martyred Son 1879"
That, patient listener, is the sad but wonderful
tale of the mountain girl of Antioch who, out of
wedlock, brought into this world a baby whom she
named Nancy. It was through this very Gap yonder
that Lucy, as she waited for her babe, used to sit
and gaze and dream and hope.
Abraham Lincoln was familiar with the story of his
mother's birth. In his brief Autobiography Lincoln
spoke with reserve of his mother. All that he says
of her is this:
"My mother was of a family
of the name of Hanks, some of whom reside in Adams,
some in Macon County, Illinois."
But once in 1850 in a buggy with Herndon, his law
partner, to plead a case in the Menard County Court
which touched upon hereditary traits, Lincoln told
Herndon that his mother was the daughter of Lucy
Hanks and a well-bred but obscure Virginia planter.
He argued that from this last source, his unknown
Grandfather on his mother's side, Lucy Hanks' lover,
came his power of analysis, his logic, his mental
activity, his ambition, and all the qualities that
distinguished him from the other members and
descendants on the Hanks family.
But, now patient friend, let us be going, lest night
overtake us on this lonely mountain side. But before
we go, look again through yonder Gap, where the Blue
Ridge is beginning to fade from view as night comes
down. That was where Lucy Hanks, mother of Lincoln's
mother, used to gaze with Destiny stirring in her
womb.
Links
Hanks Genealogy
Related Books
Abraham Lincoln's Parents This page provides
information on the lives of Abraham Lincoln's parents:
Nancy Hanks Lincoln, Thomas Lincoln, and Sarah Bush
Johnston Lincoln. This site includes pictures of Nancy
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Medical history of President Abraham Lincoln |
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