Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1913 — CAMP FIRE STORIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CAMP FIRE STORIES

LINCOLN AND DENNIS HANKS Incident of War Daye at Washington; Is Told by Cousin of ldartyred War President As a long-time acquaintance of Den* nls Hanks I wish to recall an incident) that mhy be of interest Hanks was a nephew of Nancy Hanks, the mother of Lincoln. He had acquired a crude education before his cousin Abe had a chance to learn, writes W. AJudson in the Indianapolis News. “Abe was determined to try for something;?* Hanks said to the writer one day in Paris, 111. “I reckoned it would not amount to much but I says ‘go ahead’; and before long he went ahead and knowed more than me.” Dennis Hanks moved from Kentucky with Lincoln, and the other members of the family, to Indiana, and thence to Illinois. They' settled first in Coles County, 111., afterward in Macon /county, where Miss Nancy Hanks, (a daughter of Dennis Hanks) and a woman of fine degree, was born. She married, in Decatur; Hl., P. L. Shoaff, who published and edited the first newspaper in that town. Mr. Shoaff afterward moved to Paris, and founded the Gazette, a newspaper of which his sons are now proprietors and publishers. While doing local editorial work on the Gazette the writer and "old man Hanks,” as we called him, had frequent chats and in one of these chats Dennis told why he went to Washington, D. C., when President Abraham Lincoln occupied the White House. Mind you, Dennis was just as plain and unassuming as his cousin Abe, and just as kind-hearted. A young soldier from Coles county, who, after a series of forced marches had been placed on picket duty in the presence of the enemy, fell asleep. Dennis Hanks was sent on to Washington to Intercede for the young soldier, who had been court-marshaled and sentenced to be shot. Dennis Hanks in relating his experience at the White House, said: "I went up there to see Abe and a porter at the door said: ’What do you want?* I says, ‘I want to see Abe Lincoln.* ‘Have you a card?’ he says to me. I says, ‘No, man, 1 ain’t got no card. I want to see Abe Lincoln on particular business and I want to see him mighty soon.’ That porter says, “Well, you will have to wait.’ Just about then Abe, whom I seen through the open door in a back room writin’ at a desk, looked up and seen me and says, 'Why, hello, Dennis, how are you? Come right in.’ Then you ought to seen that porter git away from that door. I don’t believe he meant no harm, but he did not know that me and Abe was cousins and old friends.” Dennis Hanks received a pardon for the Coles county young soldier 4thQugh..Ahe..lAacQla. bad tbe soldier boy come to Washington for a reprimand) and Dennis was royally entertained and presented with Abe Lincoln’s watch, which he proudly showed when he told this true story.