By Charles Joyner

• Was Abraham Lincoln Born in N.C.? 2/03
• Reader Responses 3/03
• Reader Responses 2/04
• Download the full article as a

Reader Responses 2/04

Last February we published an article (see links above) by Charles Joyner recounting the continuing speculation over the birthplace of our nation’s 16th President, Abraham Lincoln. The article cited a book published by James Cathey in 1899 asserting that Lincoln’s mother, the unmarried Nancy Hanks, became pregnant while living with the Abram Enloe family in Oconalufty, then of Swain County in western North Carolina. Mr. Enloe was a well-known, tall, angular livestock dealer. The story says that the wife of Abram Enloe, who was suspected of impregnating Nancy Hanks, banished Ms. Hanks from the household, and that Ms. Hanks was taken in at a neighbor’s place in Jonathan’s Creek, Haywood County. Later, the neighbor moved the still pregnant Nancy to Puzzle’s Creek in Rutherford County, where she gave birth to a boy and named him Abraham. She then ended up marrying a man named Tom Lincoln and moved to Kentucky.

We also published a photo of a man named Wesley Enloe, born in western North Carolina in 1811 as the ninth son of Abram, whose features resemble Lincoln’s and who was quoted in Cathey’s book supporting the Enloe connection.

After publishing the piece, we received letters that both supported and refuted the story, including reference to a scholarly article by David Andrew Sturgill that dismisses the Enloe parentage.

Recently, we received three more letters, just in time for publication during the month of Lincoln’s birth. Lincoln himself set the date of his birth at Feb. 12, 1809, though some have attempted to disprove that claim.

Thomas Fretty in San Francisco, seeing the story on our Web site, said in December that President Lincoln wrote a letter to Soloman Lincoln on March 6, 1848, stating that he was born in Kentucky. Mr. Fretty quotes from the letter as published in the book “Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858,” published by Library of America in 1989. A portion of the letter says, “I was born Feb. 12th, 1809 in Hardin County, Kentucky. My father’s name is Thomas; my grandfather’s was Abraham, the same of my own. My grandfather went from Rockingham County in Virginia to Kentucky, about the year 1782; and, two years afterwards, was killed by Indians. We have a vague tradition, that my great-grand father went from Pennsylvania to Virginia; and that he was a Quaker. . . Owing to my father being left an orphan at the age of six years, in poverty, and in a new country, he became a wholly uneducated man; which I suppose is the reason why I know so little of our family history.”

Meanwhile, Chad Medford sent us information about his Web site (www.blueridge.net/~chadm) that describes Rutherford County’s claim on Lincoln’s birthplace and includes a story told by Tom Melton, who is related to Lincoln’s nephew. The story is that the Enloe family is from Rutherford County and that Nancy Hanks was an illegitimate daughter of a local woman, Lucy Hanks, who was an itinerant spinner. Nancy, they say, was taken in as a young girl to work in the large Abram Enloe household. The family later moved to Swain County when Nancy became pregnant. When Mrs. Abram Enloe banished the pregnant Nancy Hanks, Ms. Hanks returned to Bostic in Rutherford County and gave birth to little Abe in a cabin on Puzzle Creek. The Bostic claim further asserts that Mr. Enloe arranged for a local sawmill worker, Tom Lincoln, to marry Nancy and head for Kentucky. This story alleges that Tom Lincoln was stocky and low-browed and not very smart, and that one of Mr. Enloe’s legitimate sons, Wesley, looked a lot like the President.

Then, Joan Howard Wallace of Murphy, state registrar for the Daughters of the American Revolution, told us that Frank Young of Cullowhee at last year’s Murphy Heritage Days sold out of his recent book entitled “Nancy Hanks, Single Mother of Abraham Lincoln,” which she says supports the Enloe connection.

And finally, we learned of a 2001 essay by R. Vincent Enlow, published by Genealogy Today Publications (www.genealogytoday.com/us/lincoln/genesis.html), which not only supplies copious information supporting the North Carolina Enloe connection and birthplace, but also challenges the stories about Lincoln’s birth in Kentucky.

So the beat goes on.