Senator John D. Hatfield Escaped From Libby Prison by Tunneling Out.

Hatfield Honored by Abe Lincoln. President Introduced Him to Both Houses of Congress—Story of the Famous Escape of 131 Men.

While eloquent members of the Nebraska state senate was eulogizing Abraham Lincoln on the 100th birthday of the martyred president, there sat silent, but attentive to the proceeding one member of that body who had the honor of having been introduced by Lincoln to both branches of congress. 

That man was Senator John D. "J.D." Hatfield [D] (1909-1911) of Antelope county. Few persons on the occasion of the speechmaking in the senate knew that Senator Hatfield had been thus honored or was aware of the reasons why President Lincoln had paid him this tribute. 

Captain John D. Hatfield of Neligh, Nebraska.
Escaped from Libby Prison and was Honored by President Lincoln.

Some may have noticed a little bronze button on the lapel of the senator's coat, but he had been among his fellow senators only a short time and had been so quiet that it was not even known that he claimed the honor of having met the Lincoln who is now the ideal of the American people and of the world Senator Hatfield is like four of the other members of the senate. 

He had the fortune to serve in the war of the rebellion in defense of the union. He was one of the 131 brave Union prisoners-of-war to escape from captivity by planning and digging a tunnel from Libby prison to the open air of freedom. Captain Hatfield was one of the men who escaped and made their way to the Union lines. A few days later, Hatfield was personally invited to the White House by President Abraham Lincoln to be shown every honor.

Libby Prison

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Luther Libby was running a ship supply shop from the corner of a large warehouse in Richmond, Virginia. In need of a new prison for captured Union officers, Confederate soldiers gave Libby 48 hours to evacuate his property. The sign over the north-west corner reading "L. Libby & Son, Ship Chandlers" was never removed, and consequently, the building and prison bore his name. Since the Confederates believed the building inescapable, the staff considered their job relatively easy.

Libby Prison, August 23, 1863.

Death Lottery

It was also his fortune while in Libby Prison at Richmond, Virginia to be one of the prisoners of the rank of captain who drew lots one of the most gruesome of prizes, the privilege of being hanged by the neck till dead, a fate which the rebel authorities proposed in retaliation for the hanging of two southern spies found within the union lines Neither of the two little black beans in the lottery fell to him.

Captured In a Charge

How Senator Hatfield came to meet President Lincoln dates back to Jackson, Mississippi, when by the blunder of some superior officer his troops were ordered to charge strong breastworks of the confederates.- He obeyed, as captain of Company H, 53rd Illinois, and while many of the soldiers remained on the battlefield, dead or wounded, he and about 200 others went over the breastworks. It is needless to say he stayed there as a prisoner of war. While in the hands of the southern men who commanded troops in the field he was well treated but his transfer to Libby prison at Richmond, Virginia. was a different story. Immediately after his capture, he asked permission to go back over the field. Under a guard, he was allowed this privilege. What he saw there was the most distressing sight of his life. His colonel and the lieutenant colonel were among the dead.

He remained seven months in Libby before the historical escape occurred. The life there was not to be compared to that at Andersonville, but it was bad enough. The open windows [of the large tobacco warehouse let in cold and one night the temperature fell to 4° below zero. The prisoners had nothing but one blanket and a bare floor to sleep upon and they had to run about the prison all night to keep from freezing to death.

Plan to Escape.

"I never knew who dug the tunnel," said Captain Hatfield, "for the reason that we worked at night and never were able to recognize each other in the day time. 

By removing a stove on the first floor and chipping their way into the adjoining chimney, the officers constructed a cramped but effective passage for access to the eastern basement. Once access between the two floors was established, the officers set about plans to tunnel their way out. There were fifteen men on the work and it required fifty-one days and nights.

Among the number was one civil engineer who did some calculating for us, but after all, we started to come out of the ground with the tunnel too soon before we had got past a high board fence in a vacant lot where we desired to have the exit. 

History gives the credit to Colonel Rose for planning the escape, but it belongs to others as I understand it. The men who started it found the Work too slow and called in others to help. I was confided in after the work started. The basement below where we were imprisoned was used as a storeroom and we dared not use it, so a sloping tunnel was started through the brick wall to a basement opposite our quarters. This second basement was over 100 feet long and was lighted only by one door with dirty glass. The farthest end where it was dark and where some hogsheads and barrels were piled, was the place chosen for the entrance to the main tunnel. It was planned to go under the street and come out in a vacant lot behind a store, the proposed exit being behind a high board fence. 

"You can imagine it was slow work. Two men labored in the day time and two at night. We had nothing to work with except a case knife and a chisel. To haul the dirt out of the place we had to use a wooden spittoon. To this, we tied a strip of a blanket to haul it out and to haul it into the tunnel. Every time the work stopped the hole in the wall had to be stopped up and ashes were used to make the wall look solid. Then we had to prevent the guards from missing the two men who were constantly on the work. The count taken in the morning and at night was not by actual count, but by squares of men lined up four abreast. To make the square look full one prisoner would playfully jostle another to one side and sometimes a hat would be held up to represent a man in the squad. 

We started to throw the earth taken from the tunnel into a sewer that emptied into a canal near the prison, but this was abandoned because the dirt discolored the water and made us afraid our plans would be discovered. The dirt was piled in the dark end of a large basement room behind hogsheads and barrels.

The Tunnel Finished

"The supreme moment came on the evening of February 9, 1864. At eight o'clock prisoners began to enter the tunnel to make their strike for liberty. The hole was so narrow that a big man had difficulty in worming his way through. There was danger that men would smother to death in the hole and stop our way to the open air. I entered the tunnel at 11 o'clock at night. I did not care to start earlier for fear of the patrol through the city. A large man in front of me puffed and groaned in his efforts to wiggle through the hole. One big man had to be assisted. Others crept up behind him and he put his feet on the shoulders of the man next to him and pushed, while the man in front of him pulled with all his might on his arms.

"One hundred and nine passed through the tunnel by daylight. Before I wont out I loosened and pulled out of position two bars to a window. This was planned in the hope that the rebels would not find our exit, but would think we got out of the window and that the guards would be blamed. Then it was hoped other prisoners might use the tunne! the next night. It turned out as we supposed. When the prisoners were missed in the morning the guards were placed under arrest for negligence. Diligent search was made all day for the means of escape, but nothing except the disarranged bars of the window were found till some one saw the hole in the vacant lot. Then a negro was put into it and he worked his way back into the prison through the tunnel we had used. 

"It was never accurately known how many of the 109 got into the union lines. The number was between 37 and 56. The escaped men went in twos or singly, i was alone and was five days traveling ninety miles to the union lines at Williamsburg, Va., where the Seventh New York cavalry took me in charge. I was bareheaded and barefooted and badly frozen and had only one meal of victuals in five days.

"It is no easy job to hide in the winter in the daytime. By traveling at night and hiding by day I managed to get through. The open fields, especially if they were overgrown I found the best places to hide in. The ground was frozen and made a nice place to lie in. As what clothing I had was already frozen I did not mind the frozen ground. A strong constitution was probably all that enabled me to endure the hardship of the trip. Frequently I could see the rebels searching in skirmish lines through the timber and fields for the escaped men. This kept me alert and I had little chance to forget the seriousness of the situation. 

Negro Furnishes Aid

"The rebels had destroyed all of the boats on the Chickahominy River that I had to cross and I was looking for cordwood or some other means of floating across because I knew I would die if I attempted to swim. Just then I heard someone coming through the brush. I hid under the boards of a little boat landing and when I thought the person approaching was near me I jumped out and grasped him by the neck and told him I would kill him if he tried to getaway. The only weapons I had were a butcher knife and a cane.

"Good Lord, Massey spare my life," said the man. Then I knew he was a negro, and I did not harm him. I told him who I was and what I wanted and he said he had a boat hidden in the brush. We carried it to the river and he rowed me over and said he would go back and get something for me to eat. True to his word he came back with a nice supper of cornbread and bacon, which he had had his wife cook in their cabin. That was the only meal I had on the way. 

For two days I remained at Williamsburg and then went to Fortress Monroe, where I remained one day. General Ben Butler was in command there. I had never seen him but was able to recognize him from ' descriptions of his peculiar countenance. He gave me a pass to Washington, where I arrived at 7 o'clock in the evening. The return of one of the Libby prison men appeared to create some commotion. At 8 o'clock in the evening, President Lincoln sent an orderly and invited me to come to the White House and stay overnight. I was poorly clad and felt unfit physically to appear before him and asked the orderly to present my excuse. The next morning while passing up Pennsylvania avenue a Jewish merchant came out and asked me if I was the man who came in yesterday. He wanted to sell me a uniform, but I told him I was poor and had no money. He took me in the store and insisted on giving me a uniform of my rank with the understanding that if I did not get my pay he would let me keep it for free.

I visited a barbershop and got my hair cut and with the new uniform on my back, I felt better and must have looked somewhat like a human being.

Interview With Lincoln

A brother of Governor Morton of Indiana introduced himself to me and offered to go with me to the white house. He said he was personally acquainted with the president. I accepted his offer. I can never forget how Lincoln looked. He sat down in a chair and wrapped his long loose looking legs in a peculiar way, one behind the other under the chair rungs.

"Captain," he said, "I always said if I found a man homelier than myself I would kill him. I believe I have found him."

"All right," I said, "I am not much good; I am about played out anyway."

"I'll give you one chance," he said, "I'll leave it to Mrs. Lincoln."

"If you do, my life will be spared," I replied.

He called for Mrs. Lincoln and when she entered the room, he introduced me and said, "Now, haven't I found him?"

"No," she replied, "If he were well he would be a better-looking man than you."

Lincoln then asked me questions about the escape of the prisoners and about myself. This took up the time till noon and he had me remain for dinner. He asked me if I had ever seen Washington and when I told him I had not, he offered to take me about the city. He first took me to congress, which was then in session, and introduced me to both houses. We visited all the places of interest. He took me to the paymaster general and there I drew pay amounting to $1,015 ($16,850 today). He took me to Secretary of War Stanton and told him to give me a leave of absence for thirty days and a free pass to Illinois. I suggested that I would not be in condition for service in thirty days, but Lincoln said under general orders a leave could not be granted for a longer period. He told me to report my condition and he would leave it to my honor and if necessary extend the leave of absence. I got one extension signed by President Lincoln and then went back to the service and marched with Sherman to the sea.

Butler's Famous Threat

"While with General Butler I asked about his threat to hang General Fitzhugh Lee and Captain Winder, confederate prisoners in his charge, if the rebels carried out their threat to hang Captain Sawyer and Captain Flynn of Libby prison. He said he surely would have done it. I suggested that he would not because Lincoln would not have let him.

"I would have had them shot first," said General Butler, "and then reported to Lincoln what I had done." "I never knew why Captain Sawyer and Captain Flynn were not hanged by the rebels, but I understood that the threat of General Butler saved their lives. Before I left Libby prison I heard the rebels say of General Butler, "The old brute will do it."

Letters from Libby Prison [Runtime 16:11]

The Libby Prison Break was the largest and most successful of the Civil War.

Nebraska State Journal, February 14, 1909

Edited by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

A Boy Kept Jesting Promise to Vote for Abe Lincoln.

Among the interesting reminiscences told regarding the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates which took place during the Senatorial campaign of 1858, is an incident related by George W. Hartman of San Bernardino, who was a personal acquaintance of Abraham Lincoln.

In those days there were no halls In that part of the country large enough in which to hold the political meetings, so the gatherings were held out-of-doors. On the occasion to which we refer the debate was held in a sugar grove near Rushville, Schuyler County, Illinois, and people traveled forty and fifty miles to attend it. Some came with ox teams, others in "one-hoss shays," and still others walked fifteen and twenty miles and remained overnight.

A One-Hoss Shay.

As was the custom, a torchlight procession immediately preceded the debate, each party lining up with its respective candidate in the lead. The Douglas contingent was accompanied by half a dozen bands, each consisting of a fife and a drum, playing "Yankee Doodle."

Mr. Hartman marched with Lincoln's followers, just a few feet behind the statesman.

"Abe, when you run for President I'll vote for you," he called to the man in front, and Abe Lincoln responded, "Good for you."

The procession moved on to the meeting place and Stephen Douglas opened the meeting. After he had finished with his speech he climbed out of the farm wagon which was being used as a stage and came and sat down directly in front of Lincoln. According to Mr. Hartman, the most impressive part of the debate was the significant moment when Abe Lincoln pointed his long bony finger at Stephen Douglas and repeated his famous slogan, "Stephen, you know that a nation cannot function and long survive one-half free and one-half slave."

In 1864 Mr. Hartman enlisted with the Kansas Cavalry in defense of the Union. The following year, while he was stationed with the Kansas troops at Fort Lincoln, De Vall's Bluff, Arkansas, he cast his first Presidential ballot, voting for the man to whom he had made his boyish promise six years beforehand.

By H. F. S.

Los Angeles Times, Sunday, February 8, 1925

Nancy Hanks Lincoln

A Sermon Delivered at All Souls Church in the Abraham Lincoln Centre in Chicago, by Reverend Jenkin Lloyd Jones. February 8, 1903.

Mrs. Caroline Hanks Hitchcock, of Cambridge, Mass., has recently published a little book entitled "Nancy Hanks: the Story of Abraham Lincoln's Mother," which is the forerunner of a larger work promised on the genealogy of the Hanks family in America. The book already published, with the assurance it gives of the contents of the book unpublished, throws a flood of light on what was supposed to be a dark subject, and brings belated assurance that the law of heredity was not tricked in the birth of Abraham Lincoln. At last, tardily, the great son is given back into the arms of the little pioneer mother, too long deprived of the confidence and love of those who have honored and revered the son, although he himself, while still in obscurity, is said to his partner, Herndon, "God bless my mother! All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to her." 

Nancy Hanks Lincoln

There is no sadder chapter in American history, a no more disgraceful manifestation of the vulgarity, brutality, and malignity of political methods and the obliquity of politicians than the careless if not wilful dishonoring of the ancestry of Abraham Lincoln. The idle gossip of unlettered communities set agog by political bitterness, and making common cause with unscrupulous agitators, was mistaken for history by nearly all of those who hastened to meet the want of the hour in their hurried biographies of Abraham Lincoln. There is no lack of lives of the great President; each year adds to the already long shelf of Lincoln books in America, but obviously, the true life of Abraham Lincoln is not yet written. We are too near our subject to see him in his just perspective, and there has not been time for the careful search for records, sifting of evidence, and discovery of the great forces and facts which are always involved in the making of a great historical character. Perhaps when the real life of Abraham Lincoln is written, it will be found that the material for the history of his later years, the public career of the greatest President and captain of the greatest of armies has been reasonably compassed in the books now at hand. The ten splendid volumes by John Nicolay and John Hay, the life and correspondence, supplemented by the two great, volumes of speeches, letters, and state papers of Abraham Lincoln, probably contain an amplitude of documents and most of the facts available, but certainly, the chapters concerning Lincoln's fore-elders and early childhood must all be re-written. Even the later lives of Hapgood and Morse reiterate the old scandals of illegitimacy and uncertainties of birth and marital relations which are now utterly denied by conclusive documentary evidence found in courts of record.

"Abraham Lincoln, A History" by John Nicolay and John Hay

The Complete 10 Volume Set - Vol: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10

Courtesy of "My Lincoln Library"

This cloud of obscurity and distrust has hung most heavily over the name of Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham Lincoln. But today let it be gratefully noted that accurate historical research have already brought about a vindication that must result in the loving appreciation of this maligned and much-neglected name. This vindication has come largely through the diligent and fearless research of three women, who in this work have merited and will ultimately receive the unmeasured gratitude, not only of the American people but of all lovers of the race, all believers in human nature who rejoice in its noblest representatives. 

I refer, first, to Mrs. C. S. Hobart Vawter, a relative of Vice-President Hobart, whose grandmother was Sarah Mitchell, of Kentucky, a kinswoman of Nancy Hanks. She was who was instrumental in discovering the marriage bond of Thomas Lincoln and the marriage record of Jesse Head, the Methodist minister who officiated at the marriage of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks on June 17, 1806. Another of these women is the CaroHne Hanks Hitchcock, already mentioned, who took to herself the high task of discovering the Hanks family, thus throwing a flood of light upon the ancestry of Abraham Lincoln and consequently upon the foundations of his character and power. 

The last of the three women referred to is Ida M. Tarbell, who, in her Life of Lincoln, has risen above the unfounded traditions and coarse implications of the earlier biographers. They, from lack of critical ability or ethical insight, mistook campaign gossip for evidence and idle tradition for history.

There is no doubt but that Lincoln went to his grave feeling that his own antecedents were hopelessly lost in the obscurity of the common people. In his blessed preoccupation and manly independence of tradition, inheritance, and public opinion, it probably never occurred to him to revise the statement made to Mr. J. L. Scripps, of the Chicago Tribune, in i860, who compiled the first campaign biography. Said Lincoln: "It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of me or my early life. It can all be condensed into a single sentence, and that sentence we find in Gray's Elegy," 'The short and simple annals of the poor.'

"This is my life, and that is all you or anybody else can make of it." 

''And," adds the reporter, "Mr. Lincoln seemed painfully impressed with the extreme poverty of his early surroundings and the utter absence of all romantic and heroic elements."

It was better thus, perhaps, for this child of the backwoods. He was thrown back the more surely on the ultimate resources of his own manliness.

The American people have, in the main, taken literally Lowell's lines:

"For him her Old-World molds aside she threw.

And choosing sweet clay from the breast

of the unexhausted West.

With stuff untainted shaped a hero new.

Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true."

Abraham Lincoln, in popular conception, was for many years a nineteenth-century Melchisedec—"a prince of righteousness and King of Salem, without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, made like unto the Son of God, abiding a priest continually." At least the chief bit of autobiographical writing that we have from the great President was taken as final. This was furnished to his friend and yoke-fellow, Jesse W. Fell, of Bloomington, Illinois, for campaign purposes in the year 1859. Mr. Fell was perhaps the most prophetic of the sons of Illinois, who hailed from afar the rising man of destiny. His vision was clear, even in the fifties. In this sketch Mr. Lincoln says: 

"I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Harding County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia to undistinguished families, second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of the family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now remain in Adams and others in Macon Counties, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky, about 1771 or 1772, and a year or two later he was killed by Indians, not in battle but by stealth when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names in both families—such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like.

''My father at the death of his father was but six years of age, and he grew up literally without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. We reached my new home about the time the State came into the Union. It was a wild region with bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so-called, but no qualifications were ever required of a teacher beyond 'Readin', Writin', and 'Cipherin to the Rule of Three.'" 

Here ended the question of ancestry for Mr. Lincoln himself and his early biographers, but it has now been clearly established that the name of Lincoln was given to him by an ancestry that settles solidly into the best there is in New England life. They were among those who overflowed the Norwich jail in England because ''they would not accept the ritual prepared for them by the bishop;" they pelted the tax-collector with stones, and finally, in order to "rid themselves of an odious government," they sailed away from Yarmouth Bay in 1636, and in due time founded the colony of Hingham. It was these Lincoln landowners, blacksmiths, early ironmasters, who sent their representatives southward into Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and at last into Kentucky. Abraham Lincoln who was fifth in descent from the Samuel Lincoln of England, and who had become the owner of large tracts of wild land in Kentucky, fell by the treacherous bullet of a lurking Indian in the sight of his three boys —Mordecai, Joseph, and Thomas, the latter a six-year-old boy who was saved by the timely crack of the rifle in the hands of the older brother, to become the father of the Great Emancipator.

Thomas Lincoln was not the accident in human life, the irresponsible, unaccountable, and ne'er do well that even the sober biographers of Lincoln have amused themselves over. The true estimate of Thomas Lincoln has not yet been made.

But my present purpose is to try to put into our minds and hearts the obscure, neglected, unappreciated little mother, Nancy Hanks. Thanks to Mrs. Hitchcock, we now know that Hanks is a name nobody needs to be ashamed of. It has annals that are in themselves interesting written deep in the history of England and America. I rejoice that the greatest American wasted no time in pedigree-hunting. The pride of descent is poor capital. Life is too short to be wasted on genealogies for the sake of bolstering up family pride. But there is great joy in doing justice to the memory of the dead. Let those who have pitied the great Lincoln on account of his mother or written small her place in the mystic line of causes that brought forth the beautiful mystery, hasten to repent and make amends. 

The little woman who at thirty-five years of age placed her dying hand upon the head of nine-year-old Abraham away in the backwoods of Indiana bore a name that has been traced back across the sea to the time of Alfred the Great, where two brothers of that name received ''the commoners' rights in Malmsbury" for service rendered in defeating the Danes, and the name of King Athelstan, grandson of Alfred, is on the deed. Thomas Hanks, a descendant, who was a soldier under Oliver Cromwell, had a grandson who sailed from London to Plymouth, Mass., in 1699. This Benjamin Hanks was the father of twelve children, the third of whom was William, born February 11, 1704; William moved to Pennsylvania, and his son, John Hanks, married Sarah, a daughter of Cadwallader Evans and Sarah Morris. The record runs, "John Hanks, yeoman, Sarah Evans, spinster." A grandchild of this union was Joseph Hanks, who was borne southwestward with the tide of emigration inspired and in a large measure headed by Daniel Boone, whose story and whose blood are strangely intermingled with those of the large families of Shipleys, Hankses, and Lincolns, who were much intermarried. This Joseph Hanks crossed the mountains with his family of eight children and herds of cattle and horses. He bought one hundred and fifty acres of land as his homestead near Elizabethtown, in Nelson County, Kentucky. The youngest of eight children in this migration was little Nancy, five years of age when they crossed the mountains. After four years of home-making in the wilderness, Joseph came to his death. His will, dated January 9, 1793. probated May 14. 1793, has been discovered, and a facsimile appears in Mrs. Hitchcock's book. It runs thus, somewhat abbreviated:

"In the name of God. amen. I, Joseph Hanks, of Nelson County, State of Kentucky, being of sound mind and memory but weak in body, calling to mind the frailty of all human nature, do make and demise this, my last will and testament, in the manner and form following, to-wit: I give to my son Thomas one sorrel horse, called Major'; to Joshua the grey mare, 'Bonney'; to William the grey horse, 'Gilbert'; to Charles the roan horse, Tobe'; to Joseph the horse called 'Bald.' Also I give and bequeath unto my daughter Elizabeth one heifer called 'Gentle'; to Polly a heifer called Lady,' and to my daughter Nancy one heifer, yearling, called 'Peidy.' I give and bequeath unto my wife, Nanny, my whole estate during her life, afterward to be divided among all my children."

This neglected document now reproduced in facsimile in Mrs. Hitchcock's book settles once and forever the legitimacy of the parentage of Nancy Hanks. She had a father who recognized his paternity in the thoughtful will of a prosperous pioneer. This in the eyes of the law as well as of public opinion establishes her place as a rightful child of honorable parents. 

The mother survived but a few months. The story of all the children is promised in the forthcoming Hanks Genealogy by Mrs. Hitchcock. Enough for our present purpose to know that the little orphaned Nancy, now nine years old, found a home with her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Berry, near Springfield, Ky., Mrs. Berry being her mother's sister and a member of the Shipley family. Here she lived a happy and joyous life until twenty-three years old, when Thomas Lincoln, who had learned his carpenter's trade of her uncle, Joseph Hanks, was married to her on June 17, 1806, according to official records already mentioned. The "marriage bond," to the extent of fifty pounds, required by the laws of Kentucky at that time, signed by Thomas Lincoln and Richard Berry, was duly recorded seven days before. This happy wedding was celebrated as became prosperous and well-meaning pioneers. The loving uncle and aunt. gave an "infare" to which the neighbors were bidden. Dr. Graham, an eminent Naturalist of Louisville, who died in 1885, wrote out his remembrances of that festival and testified to the same before. a notary in the 98th year of his age. He said:

"I know Nancy Hanks to have been virtuous, respectable, and of good parentage, and I knew Jesse Head, Methodist preacher of Springfield, who performed the ceremony. The house in which the ceremony was performed was a large one for those days. Jesse Head was a noted man—able to own slaves but did not on principle. At the festival, there was bear meat, venison, wild turkey, duck, and a sheep that two families barbecued over the coals of wood burned in a pit and covered with green boughs to keep the juices in."

The traditions of the neighborhood say that Nancy's cheerful disposition and active habits were considered a dower among the pioneers. She was adept at spinning flax, and in the spinning parties, to which ladies brought their wheels, Nancy Hanks generally bore off the palm, ''her spools yielding the longest and finest thread." 

The biographers agree that she was above her neighbors in education. She carried the traditions of schooling in Virginia with her over the mountains. She was a great reader; had Esop's Fables; loved the Bible and the hymn book; had a sweet voice, and loved to sing hymns.

The old neighbors remembered her as having "a gentle and trusting nature." A grandson of Joseph, an older brother of Nancy, said: 

''My grandfather always spoke of his angel sister Nancy with emotion. She taught him to read. He often told us childrens stories of their life together." The first child of Thomas and Nancy Lincoln was a daughter, Sarah. Three years after marriage came the boy, Abraham. Another son came and was named Thomas; he stayed but a few months, but long enough to touch permanently the heart of Abraham with a sense of tenderness and awe. Before they started for their new home in Indiana he remembered the mother taking her two little children by the hand, walking across the hills, and sitting down and weeping over the grave of the little babe before she left it behind forever. 

The story of that primitive home in Indiana has been told over and over again, but never with sufficient insight. Only pioneers can understand how piety and simplicity, trust and poverty, exposure and hospitality, inadequate clothing, and meagerest diet, can go hand in hand with cheerful content. 

Among the last recorded words of Nancy Lincoln was one of cheer. It was but a few days before her death when she went to visit a sick neighbor, the mother of one who was to become Rev. Allen Brooner, who tells the story. The neighbor was despondent and thought she would not live long. Said Mrs. Lincoln: ''O you will live longer than I. Cheer up." And so it proved. The pestilential milk sickness was abroad, smiting men and cattle. Uncle Thomas and Aunt Betsy Sparrow both died within a few days of each other. Soon the frail but heroic little mother was smitten. Said a neighbor: "She struggled day by day, but on the seventh day she died." There was no physician within thirty-five miles; no minister within a hundred miles. Placing her hand on the head of the little boy, nine years old, she left him her dying bequest, and the great President many years afterward in a burst of confidence entrusted the message to the memory of Joshua A. Speed, one of his earliest and most intimate friends:

"I am going away from you, Abraham, and shall not return. I know that you will be a good boy; that you will be kind to Sarah and to your father. I want you to live as I have taught you and to love your Heavenly Father."

Thomas Lincoln, wise in woodlore and not without that culture that comes with the handicrafts, sawed the boards with his own whip-saw from the trees he felled and made the coffins with his own hands for the Sparrows and for his wife. 

It was three months before Parson David Elkins came on horseback from the old Kentucky home, in response to the first letter that little Abraham ever wrote, to stand under the trees by the grave and speak his word of loving remembrance and high appreciation of the departed and of consolation and hope to the neighbors who had gathered from far and near. 

No reporter was there to take down the address, no camera was there to catch the picture, and no artist has risen to paint the scene, but it is one of the most touching events in American history. 

"Stoop-shouldered," ''thin-breasted" were the words used to describe her appearance in Indiana, but ''bright, scintillating, noted for her keen wit and repartee," was a phrase used by those who knew her as a girl in the home of her foster parents. Uncle and Aunt Berry, in Kentucky.

"The little girl grew up into a sweet-tempered and beautiful woman, the center of all the country merrymaking, a famous spinner, and housewife," says Miss Tarbell. "I remember Nancy well at the wedding, a fresh-looking girl," said Dr. Graham. 

But who has a better right to characterize the mother who bore him than the great Lincoln himself? He describes her as "of medium stature, dark, with soft and rather mirthful eyes; a woman of great force of character, passionately fond of reading; every book she could get her hands on was eagerly read." 

And why should she not be such? The Hanks blood was vital, aggressive, virile. Mrs. Hitchcock offers abundant facts to prove that "the mother of Abraham Lincoln belonged to a family which has given to America some of her finest minds and most heroic deeds."

This same Hanks family was a "remarkably inventive family. The first bell ever made in America was cast on Hanks Hill, in the old New England home. The first tower clock made in America, placed in the old Dutch church in New York City, was made by a Hanks. The bell that replaced the old Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, as well as the great Columbian bell, that was made from the relics of gold, silver, old coins and metals sent from all parts of the world, a bell which in addition to .the, old inscriptions of, the Liberty Bell added, "A new commandment I give unto you—that ye love one another," was cast by members of the Hanks family. The first silk mills in America were built by a Hanks. One of the founders of the American Bank Note Company was a Hanks. ''Hanksite" is the name of a mineral named after the discoverer, a state mineralogist of California.

Lincoln used to say that his Uncle Mordecai, his father's oldest brother, ''got away with all the brains of the family." He was a prominent member of the Kentucky legislature at one time. He was a famous storyteller, and Thomas, the carpenter, was a favorite wherever he went. He was withy, though small of stature, a famous wrestler, and, when the provocation was adequate, a terrible foe in a fight.

All these traits appear in the President, but nonetheless perceptible is the inheritance from the mother's side. Mrs. Hitchcock's little book shows two portraits side by side—that of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and the Rev. Stedman Wright Hanks, of Cambridge, Mass.—and the resemblance is so striking that one might readily be taken for the other. 

No less marked were the characteristics of the Welsh Evanses and Morrises, whose blood flowed in the veins of Nancy Hanks, as shown in Coffin's life of Lincoln.

Says Noah Brooks in his life: "Lincoln said that his earliest recollections of his mother were of his sitting at her feet with his sister, drinking in the tales and legends that were read and related to them by the house mother."

Let the land of Merlin rejoice, for, through this far-off child of the wilderness, it made its contribution of poetry, hope, and tenderness to the life of the Great Emancipator.

We have seen how the estates of his ancestors, while not insignificant, were untainted by the claim of human chattels. He himself has told us that one reason why his parents left Kentucky was their antipathy to slavery. And Miss Tarbell has found evidence that in the old Lincoln home in Kentucky there were high debates over the rights of man as set forth by Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine.

The records of the Lincoln ancestry on both sides were cruelly mutilated and for the most part, destroyed by the vandal hands of the [Civil] War of 1861-5; the war that ransacked courthouses and made bonfires of records. They were broken into again by that inevitable abandonment of impediment that goes with successive generations of pioneers. Those who go forth to conquer a new world must need to go in light marching order. Those fore elders of Lincoln took their souls along with them but left their records behind. In their zeal for the future, they grew indifferent to the past. The present so absorbed them that they sacrificed their traditions. 

Once more the Lincoln ancestry is obscured by the universal indifference to the feminine links in human descent. It will not always be so, for whatever her estimation may be in the statutes of men, women have a legislative and executive place in the statutes of God, and she contributes her full quota towards the making of man—intellectually and spiritually as well as physically. 

Lastly, the Lincoln traditions were broken upon the dead wall of slavery. The tides of New England life and European energy that traveled south and southwestward fared poorly compared with the same tides that traveled westward. It was not the Blue Ridge Mountains, but it was the black lines of slavery that held down and held back that enterprising blood and doomed to illiteracy that progeny of high ancestry. But that great wave of noble blood, at last, gathered strength in the zeal of Abraham Lincoln and his compatriots. They dashed themselves against the wall that had well-nigh wrecked them and battered it down, and public schools, free intercourse of man with man, the upward reach of the common people began to redeem the land and to restore the records and vindicate the law of heredity. Then let us give Nancy Hanks the place that belongs to her.

We of All Souls Church have set for ourselves the high task of interpreting Abraham Lincoln in terms of institutional life, civic energy, and religious liberty.

We have undertaken to build an Abraham Lincoln Centre across the way. Would that someone would see to it that there shall be one tender shrine, one mellowed and mellowing home corner within that building, that may lovingly and gratefully bear the name of Nancy Hanks Lincoln.

I wish this name might be related to an industry that shall touch the lives of generations of girls yet unborn with the benignant skill of home-making, the divine aptitudes of the fireside, the homely skill that made the pioneer fireside of Nancy Hanks Lincoln a training school for giants, a nursery of ideals, a haven for the wandering and the homeless. The day of the distaff and the skillet is gone; the Dutch oven, the open fireplace with its iron crane, are no longer parts of the household equipment or necessary elements in the training of a girl, but their equivalents remain, and homemaking is still the finest of fine arts, the test of a woman's potency now as then, as it ought to be the ideal of a true woman's training now as then. Much has been said of late about home-making; much attention has been given to schools of domestic science. I wish that such purposes might be touched with the patriotism, the historic truthfulness, the growing gratitude of humanity that rightfully goes with the name of Nancy  Hanks Lincoln.

How benign in the Lincoln Centre would be a Nancy Hanks School of Domestic Arts. What a prophetic investment of money! What a high invitation to those to whom have entrusted the grave responsibilities of wealth! What a significant opportunity! What a rare chance for investing capital in a way that will bring sure, lasting, aye, everlasting returns! When someone thinks of it so deeply that the dream becomes a fact, then the vindication of Nancy Hanks will not only have been begun but it will have been accomplished, at least in one little corner of this great country; in one Centre that shall radiate life to one group of the children who will thus become her unmeasured beneficiaries. 

Edited by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.