Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 February 1879 — Lincoln’s Parents. [ARTICLE]

Lincoln’s Parents.

In Mr. Ward H. Lamon’s somewhat famous life of Lincoln serious doubt was intimated whether the parents of the President were ever legally married, while the additional fact was privately well known that the book as printed did not express that doubt with anything like the plainness which Lamon at first intended, the efforts of Judge David Davis and Leonard Swett having been successful in suppressing a large part of the matter on the subject. The story was that Thomas Lincoln, Abraham’s father, was “wanting in character” as a young man, so that Sally Bush, “a modest and pious girl,” refused to marry him when he asked her, and that, as a bond to the State of Kentucky was required for a marriage in regular form, Thomas, when he espoused Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham Lincoln, never went through any legal ceremonial. The reticence of the ex-Presi-dent on the subject, the same disposition in other persons supposed to know about it, and the alleged absence from the record in the family Bible that Mr. Lincoln kept of any mention of his parents’ marriage gave strength to the story. But it is now ascertained very distinctly that the evidence of their marriage is complete and formal. ExSecretary Bristow has received, at New York, from Mr. R. J. Browne, a lawyer of high standing and a gentleman of character, whose residence is in Springfield, Washington county, Ky., a copy from the county records of the bonds which Thomas Lincoln gave, with Richard Berry as surety, previous to his marriage, and also of the certificate of the Methodist preacher, Jesse Head, who certifies that he married them on the 23d day of September, 1806. The record is regular in all respects, and completely silences any charge or intimation that the President’s birth was not legitimate. The simple explanation why Lamon’s searches, or those made for him, did not discover the record, seems to be that they were not made in the right place.— Philadelphia Times.