Nancy Hanks and Thomas Lincoln

Thomas Lincoln was born on January 7, 1778, in Rockingham County, Virginia, to Captain Abraham and Bathsheba Lincoln. The youngest of three sons and the fourth of five children, he moved with his family from eastern Virginia to Jefferson County, Virginia, in 1782, and four years later his father was killed by Native Americans on the family farm. A carpenter and farmer, Thomas courted and married Nancy Hanks on Beech Fork in Washington County, Kentucky, on June 12, 1806. Nancy Hanks was probably born around 1783 in Virginia to James and Lucy Shipley Hanks, though little is known about the Hanks ancestry because common names were repeated from generation to generation. At the time of her marriage, she was living on her uncle Richard Berry’s farm in Washington County. Thomas and Nancy had three children, Sarah, Abraham, and Thomas, Jr., and in 1816 the family moved west to Indiana. Nancy died on October 5, 1818, after contracting milk sickness caused by drinking milk from cows that had consumed poisonous white snakeroot, and before her death she called Sarah and Abraham to her bedside and told them to be good and kind to their father, to one another, and to the world. A year later Thomas married Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow from Elizabethtown, Kentucky. He later continued west to Macon County, Illinois, and lived the rest of his life in Coles County, Illinois, until his death in 1851.

Kentucky · United States