Was Abraham Lincoln Born in N.C.?

Various links

By Charles Joyner

Reader Responses 3/03

Several people contacted us and Charles Joyner about Mr. Joyner’s article [“Was Abraham Lincoln Born in Western North Carolina?”, February 2003] on the book “The Genesis of Lincoln,” by James H. Cathey. Cathey claims that Abraham Lincoln’s mother, Nancy Hanks, gave birth to her son, Abraham, in western North Carolina.

The book was first published in 1899, and although several editions were issued subsequently, the book has long been out of print. If you’re interested in reading it, try your local library’s Interlibrary Loan program.

Patricia K. Smith, of Morganton, sent us copies of newspaper articles about her aunt’s mother-in-law, Callie Elizabeth Foster, who died in Fairview (Buncombe County) in March 1962. Born Callie Edney, near Edneyville (Henderson County), Mrs. Foster would tell the same story that James Cathey recounts in his book: that Abraham Enloe of Rutherford County (Callie Foster’s great-grandfather) was the father of Nancy Hanks’ illegitimate son, who she named Abraham.

Richard “Harry” Brown, a member of Rutherford EMC, told us that the alleged site of Lincoln’s North Carolina birthplace is in Bostic, northeast of Forest City in Rutherford County, where the Bostic Historical Society has placed a marker.
Kathleen A. Shipley, of Brevard, told us that since childhood she had heard that Nancy Hanks was related to her family, the Shipleys of Maryland. She says that other research, however, shows that Nancy Hanks had no connection to North Carolina. She referred us to a paper by David Andrew Sturgill that refutes the North Carolina and Enloe connections: It’s in the “Ideas of the Past” section at the Web site: www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/6552/lincoln.htm.

Which is why Charles Joyner advises in his Carolina Country article: “You be the judge.”