his knowledge. The character and
condition of his father, of whom alone upon that side of the house he
had personal cognizance, did not encourage him to pry into the obscurity
behind that luckless rover. He was sensitive on the subject; and when he
was applied to for information, a brief paragraph conveyed all that he
knew or desired to know. Without doubt he would have been best pleased
to have the world take him solely for himself, with no inquiry as to
whence he came,--as if he had dropped upon the planet like a meteorite;
as, indeed, many did piously hold that he came a direct gift from
heaven. The fullest statement which he ever made was given in December,
1859, to Mr. Fell, who had interrogated him with an eye "to the
possibilities of his being an available candidate for the presidency in
1860:" "My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished
families,--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother ... was of a
family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now remain in Adams, some
others in Macon, counties, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham
Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky, about
1781 or 1782.... 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." This effort to connect the
President with the Lincolns of Massachusetts was afterward carried
forward by others, who felt an interest greater than his own in
establishing the fact. Yet if he had expected the quest to result
satisfactorily, he would probably have been less indifferent about it;
for it is obvious that, in common with all Americans of the old native
stock, he had a strenuous desire to come of "respectable people;" and
his very reluctance to have his apparently low extraction investigated
is evidence that he would have been glad to learn that he belonged to an
ancient and historical family of the old Puritan Commonwealth, settlers
not far from Plymouth Rock, and immigrants not long after the arrival of
the Mayflower. This descent has at last been traced by the patient
genealogist.

So early as 1848 the first useful step was taken by Hon. Solomon
Lincoln of Hingham, Massachusetts, who was struck by a speech delivered
by Abraham Lincoln in the national House of