ial life he would endeavor
to trace out his genealogy and family history. He had a vague impression
that his family had emigrated from England to Pennsylvania and thence to
Virginia; but, as he remarked in my presence to Mr. Ashmun of
Massachusetts, and afterward to Governor Andrew, there was not, he
thought, any immediate connection with the families of the same name in
Massachusetts, though there was reason to suppose they had a common
ancestry.

Having entered upon this subject, and already said more than was
anticipated at the commencment, the opportunity is fitting to introduce
extracts from a statement made by himself and to accompany it with other
facts which have come into my possession since his death--facts of which
he had no knowledge.

In a brief autobiographical sketch of his life, written by himself, he
says:

I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin county, Kentucky. My
parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished
families--second families perhaps I should say. My mother, who died
in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, some of
whom now reside in Adams and others in Macon county, Illinois. My
paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham
county, Virginia, to Kentucky, about 1781 or 2, where, a year or
two later, he was killed by Indians, not in battle, but by stealth,
when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. 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.

My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age;
and he grew up literally without education. He removed from
Kentucky to what is now Spencer county, Indiana, in my eighth year.
We reached our new home about the time the State came into the
Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals
still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so
called; but no qualification was ever required of a teacher, beyond
reading, writing, and ciphering to the rule of three. If a
straggler, supposed to understand Latin, happened to sojourn in the
neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. Ther