About Nancy Hanks Lincoln

Nancy Hanks Lincoln was born on February 5, 1784 in present-day West Virginia. Through documented existing records (verified by noted Lincoln family historian Louis A. Warren) James Hanks (son of Joseph Hanks, a prominent settler in the Virginia wilderness during the late eighteenth century) was her father and Lucinda (Lucy) Shipley (daughter of Robert Shipley, another prominent pioneer in the history of early Kentucky) was her mother. James Hanks apparently died sometime in 1785, leaving Lucy a widow, and when Nancy was about four, the Hanks and Shipley families moved westward to Kentucky together. Once the pioneers arrived in the untamed wilderness, Nancy went to live with her mother’s sister, Rachel Shipley Berry, in the Beechwood area of Washington County, Kentucky. Years later when Nancy was a teenager she met Thomas Lincoln while still living with the Berry family. They were married in June 1806 and briefly lived in various areas of Washington County. Their first child was born in 1807 followed by a second named after his grandfather in February 1809. A third child followed but died soon after. In 1816 the Lincoln family decided to settle in nearby Indiana. Two years later during the fall of 1818 tragedy struck the little community called Pigeon Creek, where the Lincolns had settled, as an unknown illness rapidly swept through the neighborhood without warning, killing Nancy Hanks Lincoln on October 5, 1818. She was only thirty-four years old.

The untimely death of Nancy Hanks Lincoln had a profound effect on her son throughout his childhood and adult life but despite this tragedy, Abraham Lincoln never forgot what she had meant to him and upon becoming President in 1860 he proudly acknowledged his late mother by crediting her with being solely responsible for the man he had become. In the years since Nancy Hanks Lincoln has been honored with yearly pilgrimages to her gravesite in Indiana at the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial State Park by people from all over the United States paying homage to the woman who gave history such a great human being to honor and appreciate. In October 2014, a global Internet public library named in honor of Nancy Hanks Lincoln was created by publisher Gary Brin to further honor the woman whose dedication to education inspired her beloved son to achieve extraordinary greatness during his lifetime despite having so many insurmountable obstacles placed in his path at such a young age due to poverty.

Education is the key to success. Knowledge is power.

Of note: The background of Nancy Hanks Lincoln has been the subject of revisionist history for the last twenty years, most recently with misleading stories about supposed DNA tests contradicting her Shipley heritage in order to give credence to malicious stories started by Abraham Lincoln’s former law partner, William H. Herndon. Unfortunately the DNA tests were found to be misleading based on sloppy work done by so-called writers (of books on the Lincoln family) involved in trying to change history to their liking in order to increase sales of their works by discrediting the decades of research done by Lincoln historian Louis A. Warren, claiming his work was inaccurate, but being unable to provide proof to validate their dubious claims, some of which included imaginary relatives that no records can be found anywhere other than revisionist websites that channels conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, the mentioned DNA tests have never been scrutinized by professional experts and remain just words by those who have no credibility against a historian whose work remains the gold standard for others to follow. Of importance to remember when assuming DNA tests are always the end all to everything, such tests are only as accurate as those who administered them, and if the right people were tested. Mistakes are made every day with DNA results and so-called writers of biographical accounts of the life of the Lincoln family should have thought about that before taking the word of test results that may or may not be accurate based on human error or of results that were possibly prepaid in advance to fit a select view which benefitted a specific entity or entities bent on revising history to their liking. Not all Internet sites subscribe to telling the truth, and sites that are not accredited to respectable organizations should be scrutinized more closely before accepting at face value something by someone who is not above lying to push their own fantastical agenda.

For accurate info on Nancy Hanks Lincoln, read or download a free copy of the definitive biography about her life originally published in 1952 under the title Nancy Hanks Lincoln A Frontier Portrait. It located in the American Politics section of this library under the Books tab.