by Albert Kaplan
Let us read William Herndon's account beginning with a description of Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's father: "He (Thomas Lincoln) was, we are told, five feet ten inches high, weighed one hundred and ninety-five pounds, had a well-rounded face, dark hazel eyes, coarse black hair, and was slightly stoop-shouldered. His build was so compact that Dennis Hanks used to say that he could not find the points of separation between his ribs ... was sinewy, and gifted with great strength, was inoffensively quiet and peaceable, but when roused to resistance a dangerous antagonist." *
"It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods" wrote Lincoln in the Fell autobiography. More details are found in the sketch he furnished John L. Scripps. "He (Thomas Lincoln) settled in an unbroken forest, and this clearing away of the surplus wood was the great task ahead. Abraham, though very young was large of his age, and had an ax (axe) put into his hands at once: and from that till within his twenty-third year he was almost constantly handling that most useful instrument - less, of course, in plowing and harvesting seasons."
Herndon reports, "By the time he had reached his seventeenth year he had attained the physical proportions of a full-grown man. He was employed to assist James Taylor in the management of a ferry boat across the Ohio River near the mouth of Anderson's Creek, but was not allowed a man's wages for the work. He received thirty-seven cents a day for what he afterwards told me was the roughest work a young man could be made to do."
"In June the entire party, including Offut, boarded a steamboat going up the river. At St. Louis they disembarked, Offut remaining behind while Lincoln, Hanks, and Johnson started across Illinois on foot. At Edwardsville they separated. Hanks going to Springfield, while Lincoln and his step-brother following the road to Coles Country, to which point old Thomas Lincoln had meanwhile removed. Here Abe did not tarry long, probably not over a month, but long enough to dispose most effectively of one Daniel Needman, a famous wrestler who had challenged the returned boatman to a test of strength. The contest took place at a locality known as "Wabash Point". Abe threw his antagonist twice with comparative ease, and thereby demonstrated such marked strength and agility as to render him forever popular with the boys of the neighborhood."
"He enjoyed the brief distinction his exhibitions of strength gave him more than the admiration of his friends for his literary or forensic efforts. Some of the feats attributed to him almost surpass belief. One witness declares he was equal to three men, having on a certain occasion carried a load of six hundred pounds. At another time he walked away with a pair of logs which three robust men were skeptical of their ability to carry. "He could strike with a maul a heavier blow - could sink an axe deeper into wood than any man I ever saw." is the testimony of another witness."
(Interrupting Herndon's account for a moment to quote from Browne's biography of Lincoln, on page 53, quoting Dennis Hanks: "My, how he could chop! His ax would flash and bite into a sugar-tree or sycamore, and down it would come. If you heard his fellin' trees in a clearin' you would say there was three men at work by the way the trees fell.")
"They (the Clary's Grove boys) conceded leadership to one Jack Armstrong, a hardy, strong, and well-developed specimen of physical manhood, and under him they were in the habit of "cleaning out" New Salem whenever his order went forth to do so. Offut and "Bill" Clary - the latter skeptical of Lincoln's strength and agility - ended a heated discussion in the store one day over the new clerk's ability to meet the tactic of Clary's Grove, by a bet of ten dollars that Jack Armstrong was, in the language of the day, "a better man than Lincoln". The new clerk strongly opposed this sort of an introduction, but after much entreaty of Offut, at last consented to make his bow to the social lions of the town in this unusual way. He was now six feet four inches high, and weighed, as a friend and confident, William Green, tells with impressive precision, "two hundred and fourteen pounds". The contest was to be a friendly one and fairly conducted. All New Salem adjourned to the scene of the wrestle. Money, whisky, knives, and all manner of property were staked on the result. It is unnecessary to go into the details of the encounter. Everyone knows how it ended: how at last the tall and angular rail-splitter, enraged at the suspicion of foul tactics, and profiting by his height and length of his arms, fairly lifted the great bully by the throat and shook him like a rag ...."
"Mr. Lincoln's remarkable strength resulted not so much from muscular power as from the toughness of his sinews. He could not only lift from the ground enormous weight, but could throw a cannonball or a maul farther than anyone in New Salem."
"No little of Lincoln's influence with the men of New Salem can be attributed to his extraordinary feats of strength. By an arrangement of ropes and straps, harnessed about his hips, he was enabled one day at the mill to astonish a crowd of village celebrities by lifting a box of stones weighing near a thousand pounds." (Interrupting Herndon's account again, on page 154 of Ward H. Lamon's "The Life of Lincoln", one reads "Lincoln has often been seen in the old mill on the river bank to lift a box of stones weighing from one thousand to twelve hundred pounds."
In 1998 the University of Illinois Press published "Herndon's Informants", edited by Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis. On page 7 is a May 28, 1865 letter to William H. Herndon from his cousin, J. Rowan Herndon. An excerpt, as written, follows: "... he was By fare the stoutest man that i ever took hold of i was a mear Child in his hands and i considered my self as good a man as there was in the Cuntry untill he Come about i saw him lift Betwen 1000 and 1300 lbs of Rock waid in a Boxx ..."
Continuing Herndon's account: "There is no fiction either, as suggested by some of his biographers, in the story that he lifted a barrel of whisky from the ground and drank from the bung; but in performing this later almost incredible feat he did not stand erect and elevate the barrel, but squatted down and lifted it to his knees ..."
"When he walked he moved cautiously but firmly; his long arms and giant hands swung down by his side. He walked with even tread, the inner sides of his feet being parallel. He put his whole foot flat down on the ground at once, not landing on the heal; he likewise lifted his foot all at once, not rising from the toe, and hence he had no spring to his walk. His walk was undulatory - catching and pocketing tire, weariness, and pain, all up and down his person, and thus preventing them from locating. The first impression of a stranger, or a man who did not observe closely, was that his walk implied shrewdness and cunning - that he was a tricky man; but in reality it was the walk of caution and firmness."
"From Lincoln’s campaign biography we read the following: “In the autumn of 1816 when Abraham was eight years old, his father determined to quit Kentucky. Already the evil influences of slavery were beginning to be felt by the poor and the non-slave-holders. But the emigration of Thomas Lincoln is, we believe, to be chiefly attributed to the insecurity of the right by which he held his Kentucky land; for, in those days, land titles were rather more uncertain than other human affairs. Abandoning his old home, and striking through the forests in a northwesterly direction, he fixed his new dwelling-place in the heart of the "forest primeval" of what is now Spencer County, Indiana. The dumb solitude there had never echoed to the ax, and the whole land was a wilderness."
"The rude cabin of the settler was hastily erected, and then those struggles and hardships commenced which are the common trials of frontier life, and of which the story has been so often repeated. Abraham was a hardy boy, large for his years, and with his ax did manful service in clearing the land. Indeed, with that implement, he literally hewed out his path to manhood; for until he was twenty-three, the ax was seldom out of his hand, except in the intervals of labor, or when it was exchanged for the plow, the hoe, or the sickle."
"Returning to Herndon: “Mr. George Close, the partner of Lincoln in the rail-splitting business, says that Lincoln was, at this time, a farm laborer, working from day to day, for different people, chopping wood, mauling rails, or doing whatever was to be done. The country was poor, and hard work was the common lot; the heaviest share falling to the young unmarried men, with whom it was a continual struggle to earn a livelihood. Lincoln and Mr. Close made about one thousand rails together, for James Hawks and William Miller, receiving their pay in homespun clothing. Lincoln's bargain with Miller's wife, was, that he should have one yard of brown jeans, (richly dyed with walnut bark) for every four hundred rails made, until he should have enough for a pair of trousers. As Lincoln was already of great altitude, the number of rails that went to the acquirement of his pantaloons was necessarily immense."
The primeval forest of America is no more, nor the men and boys who cleared it. Abraham Lincoln's father, Thomas, was a man of extraordinary strength. "... he could not find the point of separation between his ribs ..." describes a muscularity unknown in the world today. And, Abraham's strength was molded, no less than his father's by a labor of monumental proportion.
Mr. Offut boasted that there was no stronger man in the State of Illinois than his clerk, Abraham Lincoln. And, we read in Richard N. Current's "The Lincoln Nobody Knows" the following: "The strongest man I ever looked at" recalled an Illinoisan who had helped Lincoln with his bath when he was in Galesburg to debate with Stephen A. Douglas (1848)." My favorite description is that of Elliot Herndon, William H. Herndon's brother. He succinctly summed up young Lincoln: "I would say he was a cross between Venus and Hercules".
Continuing to quote Richard N. Currrent, we read, "A couple of years before starting the beard he had referred in public, in his self-deprecating way, to his 'poor lean, lank face.'" His nose was prominent and slightly askew, with the tip glowing red, as Herndon noticed. His heavy eyebrows overhung deep eye-caverns in which his eyes - sometimes dreamy, sometimes penetrating - were set. His cheekbones were high, his cheeks rather sunken, his mouth wide, his lips thick, especially the lower one, and his chin upturned. On the right cheek, near his mouth, a solitary mole stood out. His skin was sallow, leathery, wrinkled, dry, giving him a weather-beaten look. He had projecting - some said flapping - ears. His hair was thick and unruly, stray locks falling across his forehead."
"The foregoing list of traits hardly adds up to a flattering sum. The physical Lincoln, the external man, was made for caricature, was the delight of cartoonists. But there was more, far more, to Lincoln's appearance than all this. He cannot fairly be depicted by a mere catalogue of his peculiarities. To the people he met he made an impression which no such inventory can convey."
"At first glance, some thought him grotesque, even ugly, and almost all considered him homely. When preoccupied or in repose he certainly was far from handsome. At times he looked unutterably sad, as if every sorrow were his own, or he looked merely dull, with a vacant gaze. Still, as even the caustic Englishman Dicey observed, there was for all his grotesqueness, "an air of strength, physical as well as moral, and a strange look of dignity" about him. And when he spoke a miracle occurred. "The dull, listless features dropped like a mask." according to Horace White, an editor of the Chicago Tribune. "The eyes began to sparkle, the mouth to smile, the whole countenance was wreathed in animation, so that a stranger would have to said, "Why this face, so angular and somber a moment ago, is really handsome!" "He was the homeliest man I ever saw." said Donn Piatt, and yet there was something about the face that Piatt never forgot. "It brightened, like a lit lantern, when animated."
"Here was a Lincoln the camera never caught. When he went to the studio and sat before the lens he invariably relapsed into his sad, dull, abstracted mood. No wonder, he had to sit absolutely still, with his head against the photographer's rack, while the tedious seconds ticked by. It took time to get the image with the slow, wet-plate process of those days. There was no candid camera, no possibility of taking snapshots which might have recorded Lincoln at his sparkling best. "I have never seen a picture of him that does anything like justice to the original." said Henry Villard, the New York Herald reporter. "He is a much better looking man than any of the pictures represent."
"The portrait painters were hardly more successful. "Lincoln's features were the despair of every artist who undertook his portrait." his private secretary John G. Nicolay declared. A painter might measure the subject, scrutinize him in sitting after sitting, and eventually produce a likeness of a sort. But "this was not he who smiled, spoke, laughed, charmed." said Nicolay. The poet Walt Whitman commented after getting a close-up view: "None of the artists or pictures have caught the subtle and indirect expression of this man's face." And again, some years after Lincoln's death: "Though hundreds of portraits have been made, by painters and photographers (many to pass on, by copies, to future times), I have never seen one yet that in my opinion deserved to be called a perfectly good likeness: nor do I believe there is really such a one in existence."
"The word pictures do much to supply what the photographs and paintings missed, yet these descriptions also fail to show the man complete. All who tried to describe him admitted that the phenomenal mobility and expressiveness of his features, the reflections of his complex and wide-ranging personality, were beyond the power of words. "The tones, the gestures, the kindling eye, and mirth-provoking look defy the reporter's skill." the reporter Noah Brooks confessed after seeing Lincoln deliver the Cooper Union speech (1860)."
"Beyond a certain point Lincoln's appearance not only defied description; it also baffled interpretation. "There is something in the face which I cannot understand." said Congressman Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts. And the leader of the German-Americans in Illinois, Gustave Koerner, remarked: "Something about the man, the face is unfathomable. In his looks there were hints of mysteries within." **
Here is a rare description of Lincoln in the early 1840's, taken from the October 3, 1955 issue of "Lincoln Lore": "The summer edition of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society has contributed an extremely valuable world portrait of Abraham Lincoln preliminary to his congressional term. Harmon Y. Reynolds edited the "Masonic Towell" published in Springfield, Illinois and shortly after the assassination of the President prepared an editorial for the issue of May 15, 1865, which opened with the statement that he had known Lincoln "ever since 1840". The paragraph in which he described Lincoln in the early forties follows:"
"The people are accustomed to look upon Mr. Lincoln as he appeared when elected President. The pictures and photographs that meet the eye everywhere, even when flattering him, by no means do justice to his appearance in early manhood. The first time we saw him to know him, he rose to address the House. His figure was tall, and his face sufficiently full to relieve the prominences so noticeable in later life. Although dark, yet his face was fresh, almost to floridness, his eye was brilliant and speaking (sparkling), his hair was heavy and well-dressed, and greatly added to his appearance. No man in the house seemed to care so little for dress, and yet no one dressed in better taste. Humor, mercy, and talent were ineffaceably delineated upon his countenance."
Lincoln described how, in the early 1840's, he appeared to voters who knew him only by his appearance. In a letter to Martin M. Morris, dated March 26, 1843, he wrote, "It would astonish if not amuse, the older citizens to learn that I (a stranger, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working on a flatboat at ten dollars per month) have been put down here as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction."
The reader recognizes that Abraham Lincoln was extraordinarly strong, that on a few occasions, in public demonstrations of his remarkable strength, he lifted as much as 1300 pounds. Whether a dead lift of modern weights or an arrangement of straps which Lincoln used, we are at the extreme limit of human strength.
These were men of Herculean strength. We are in the presence of human physical strength unknown in the world today.
Abraham was famous for his strength long before he was known in any other capacity. The strength of Thomas, his father, was, I believe, greater than that of his son, and interestingly, their skeletal structures were completely different. Father was solid rock, the son a tall, stout tree.
Human strength in its purest form were the persons of Thomas Lincoln and his son, Abraham.
Interestingly, Abraham's weight, at this time in his life, was substantially greater than his later average of 180 pounds. At the zenith of his strength, probably early during his New Salem days, he was described by several eye-witnesses, as "fat, round, plump, and stout". Given his 6 feet 4 inches height, I suppose that his weight, at this time, was close to 260 pounds. (He was a guest of a small idealist community of English aristocrats whose culinary abilities were likely profound. Lincoln would have been a welcome breakfast, lunch, and dinner guest each and every day. Only thus can his weight be accounted for.) By the way, it is generally not realized that Ann Rutledge, Lincoln's deep love, whom he met in New Salem, is of the very same Rutledge family so prominent in American history).
It requires a bit of imagination to visualize the physiques of Thomas Lincoln and his son Abraham. If you would have accidentally bumped into Thomas or his son, you would think that you encountered a piece of wood. There was no “give” to their muscularity. Their muscles were very tightly compressed.
I recall reading that President Lincoln picked up a heavy sword and displayed his ability to hold it aloft at a 90 degree angle, longer than could any younger man present, all soldiers. And, of course, he could. That sword, to him, was almost weightless. I also recall reading about a fire at the White House or in an adjacent building, a witness describing President Lincoln jumping over a hedge to the rescue. The degree of his athletic abilities could hardly be imagined.
Abraham Lincoln's great strength was measured on another scale. As I reflect on his certain Samsonic physique, perhaps the likes of which has not been seen before or since, I think that we of 2016 would be utterly speechless if we could see Abraham Lincoln at the zenith of his physical strength, likely in 1832/1833. Perhaps never have human eyes beheld such a physique.
The residents of New Salem were, I am sure, overwhelmed by the appearance of Abraham Lincoln. Incredible as it seems to be, they were looking at one of the strongest men ever to walk the face of this planet. And, handsome beyond belief. A living god had descended upon them. The people of New Salem must have felt the magnitude of the moment.
I think of him as a child of destiny. Imagine for a moment the nursery of a European prince born into a ruling family: splendidly arranged rooms of a great palace. Lincoln's nursery was the North American forest primeval, a setting of such splendor all the palaces of the world combined would, by comparison, pale and fade away.
In his November 22, 1888 letter to Jesse Weik, William Henry Herndon, his law partner, wrote of Lincoln,
I will now close this review by briefly mentioning the daguerreotype image of the young man. Forensic science confirms its bonefides. The young man is Lincoln. In fact, there is no possibility he is not Lincoln. Because as a child Lincoln suffered a traumatic blow to the head with consequential facial deformities, we are offered unique points of identification which, if present in the Kaplan daguerreotype, would be ponderous evidence. And, it is all there, clearly, plainly. These unique, trauma-induced peculiarities of Lincoln's face (masterfully analyzed by Dr. Edward J. Kempf., "Abraham Lincoln's Organic
and Emotional Neurosis", American Medical Association Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, April 1952, Volume 67, Number 4, pp. 419-433; and "Abraham
Lincoln's Philosophy of Common Sense", New York Academy of Sciences, 1965, Volume I, Chapter I, pp. 1-18.) are seen, unmistakably, in the daguerreotype.
*It has been declared by one of his contemporaries that Thomas was incapable of having children as a result of having had measles. Another contemporary believed that Thomas was, for some unspoken condition, unable to procreate. That and all related is pure nonsense. The origin of such tales is that men of the strength of Thomas Lincoln are, by the dictate of nature, celibate. Thomas Lincoln, and his son, Abraham, and other men of that highest possible degree of human strength, are celibate. Without celibacy they would be unable to do the work they did. It would have been, literally, impossible.
It is physically impossible to be as strong as the Lincolns without celibacy.
In this 21st Century there are no human beings as strong as Thomas Lincoln. In his day he was one of strongest men on planet earth. Today we probaby don’t have a single human being on this globe as strong as he was. Not one. His was another dimension of human strength. The density of his muscles was bone-like, a hardness normally unknown to our species.
When a boy’s father is Thomas Lincoln, it is no surprise that the child becomes extraordinarily strong. Abraham Lincoln was hardwood walking. Like his father, the tightness of his muscles was intense.
In the far reaches of England, the ancestors of Thomas were surely connected with Lincolnshire and the general area, the grounds of an ancient race of which, in truth, we know very little. However, surely, they were a physically stout race likely, I think, without much if any Roman blood.
He was a cabinet-maker. I remember seeing a photograph of a chest of drawers attributed to him. As I recall, it was beautiful.
Abraham spoke of a” doctrine of necessity”, or words very close, and surely this understanding was at least partly based on his daily life, working with his father from the age of 10 to his early 20s. We of the 21st Century cannot imagine the work they did from dawn to dusk; a man and his son engaged in physical work of such intensity, physical pain was close to being constant. They lived with pain. Literally.
Who was Thomas? What was his thinking, his views, his beliefs?
Thomas Lincoln is lost to us, lost to history.
I am reminded of the Father of George Washington who was, I say, a greater man than his son. The father of George Washington was an extraordinary personality, one of the if not “the” leading intellectual on these shores. With such a father, the son is George Washington.
When Abraham was approximately 6 or 7 years of age, he had a pet pig whom he loved. They were close. Abraham deeply loved his little friend.
I think that Abraham’s essential relationship with his father had that watershed moment after which it was never the same. It ended with the pig's murder.
The Father of Abraham Lincoln had to have been remarkable. You do not have a son, “Abraham Lincoln”, lest it is the will of God.
Thomas lost his son, Abraham, when he killed the pig. When Thomas killed the pig, he killed more than the pig.
** General U.S. Grant’s infamous General Order 11 was revoked before a delegation of concerned citizens arrived in Washington to see President Lincoln concerning it. The delegates were Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise, Rabbi Max Lilienthal, and Mr. Edgar M. Johnson of Cincinnati, Ohio; Martin Bijur of Louisville, Kentucky; and Abraham Goldsmith of Paducah, Kentucky. The meeting was held at the White House on January 7, 1863. To my knowledge the only delegate to document his meeting with the President was Rabbi Wise. From his published Lincoln eulogy we read the following: “Brethren, the lamented Abraham Lincoln believed himself to be bone of the our bone and flesh from our flesh. He supposed himself to be a descendant of Hebrew parentage. He said so in my presence. And, indeed, he preserved numerous features of the Hebrew race, both in countenance and character.”
As the lineage of Thomas Lincoln, Abraham’s Father, is well known, it is only to Lincoln’s Mother to whom we can look for the supposed Jewish bloodline.
It seems extraordinary that so little is known of the background of Nancy Hanks, the Mother of Abraham Lincoln. The sum of what historians declare is known is this: She had three Lincoln children, Sarah, Abraham, and Thomas. She was described as tall, slim, and dark haired. She was literate. She read the Bible to Abraham. That sums it up.
Let us of the year 2020 reflect on this young woman. Unquestionably, she was fearless and adventurous, so much so it was said that her son, Abraham, was born “further West than any white child before him.” She may have been born in Virginia around 1784. Herndon reports that Lincoln told him that his Mother was the illegitimate child of a Virginia aristocrat. That rings true to me. Upon reflection however, the Caribbean should be considered a possibility as the place of her birth and upbringing. She died in 1818 when Abraham was 9 years old.
It seems likely to me that Nancy Hanks was of the tiny Sephardic community of America. “Nancy Hanks” would have been an adopted name, and the illiterate Hanks clan her adopted family. William Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner, reported that Lincoln told him, “All I am or ever hope to be I owe to my angel Mother.”
Post-Script October 28, 2017
The daguerreian was brilliant. I say that the daguerreian was brilliant as an artist is brilliant, and his technical knowledge had to have been encyclopedic. If the daguerreotype was made in Louisville, he was surely T. E. Moore, a physician and dentist as well as a great artist; together with a gentleman named Ward they were known as the itinerate daguerreian team of Moore & Ward. (Dear reader, please note that I am not certain that the daguerreotype was made in Louisville in 1841. Thus, what I write about that possibility is not more than a possibility, however likely I feel it is correct.)
Of course, Lincoln is the crown jewel of the collection. It is the most important photograph known.
Post-Script November 29, 2018
Many years ago, I saw, in a book about Lincoln, a drawing of Lincoln, apparently made from life by a highly talented artist. In the drawing, Lincoln was wearing a shawl as protection from, apparently, inclement weather. To me he appears to be a Sephardic Jew at prayer. The shawl appears to me to be a Tallis. If any reader knows this drawing, do please get in touch with me. I wish to see it again, and to learn of the artist.
Above my desk, on the wall, is a framed photographic print of the Kaplan Collection's daguerreotype of Abraham Lincoln, to me, an idealized photographic image of a Sephardic Jew. The distinguished young man of the image is a character study of a Sephardic Jew. If this man of the photograph on the wall is not a Sephardic Jew, I ask the reader to come up with a better example thereof. It should be noted - must be noted - that at the 1863 meeting at the White House, President Lincoln pointed out to the delegates that his appearance was that of a Jew.
By Jewish law, the child of a Jewish woman is a Jew. The father does not enter into the equation.
Abraham Lincoln was a Jew. Nancy Hanks was, unquestionably, a Sephardic Jewess. This now almost completely extinct aristocracy of an ancient race. The few Jews in America in the 18th Century were, essentially, the descendants of refugees from the Spanish expulsion who had settled in the Caribbean. Nancy's adventurousness begins to acquire “meat on the bone” if the Caribbean was her home. She would have been, literally, a child of paradise: perhaps highly educated, free-spirited, strong, healthy, a beautiful young woman full of vim and vigor, a force of nature. Interestingly, Herndon reported that Lincoln mentioned to him that his Mother “was an intellectual."
The adventurousness of Nancy Hanks had to have been over the top, like the scale of her fearlessness. This woman had no fear. She did her own thinking, and made her own decisions. Could the Mother of Abraham Lincoln have been otherwise?
The relationship between Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks had to have been extraordinary. It was a joining of two planets, two worlds put together on the American frontier, a marriage of convenience if not necessity. Nancy selected Thomas. This man - quiet, modest, and inoffensive - together with his other-worldly strength and brilliant practical abilities, sealed the matter for Nancy Hanks.
Jerome Corsi, whose understanding of Lincoln and the Civil War period is profound, showed me a photograph of a son of Enloe. The physique of this man was that of Abraham Lincoln. Exactly. He shouts out, from the photograph, to be a brother of Abraham Lincoln.
Who was Enloe? I understand that he had many children, and that Nancy Hanks was a houseguest of the Enloe family. This man was, I believe, the biological father of Abraham Lincoln.
Years ago, I read that Enloe and Thomas Lincoln had a physical encounter, what might be called a “fight”. Nonsense, pure invention. No human being would or could have a “fight” with Thomas Lincoln who could snap a man in two with the same ease as the reader can snap a matchstick. Perhaps the very last human being on planet earth one would have a “fight” with was Thomas Lincoln. His mere physical presence was overpowering. There would be no such thing as having a “fight” with Thomas Lincoln.
If any reader has any Enloe information, do please let me hear from you.
Post-Script November 15, 2019
NANCY HANKS
Among her other qualities, the Mother of Abraham Lincoln, Nancy Hanks, possessed two of critical significance on the American frontier. She was strong and ... fearless. This young woman sought out the very tip of the western expansion of this continent. It was said that her son Abraham was “born further west than any white child before him”. Childbirth on the American frontier was full of risk. Abraham’s sister, Sarah, died in childbirth.
In 1863, at the White House, President Lincoln declared to a visiting delegation of Jews, that he believed he was a Jew. Abraham Lincoln a Jew? We know a great deal of the lineage of Thomas Lincoln. There was no Jewish blood in Thomas Lincoln. That leaves Nancy, of whose lineage we know nothing.
Her Jewishness makes more sense to me only if she was born and raised in the Caribbean rather then Virginia. Her Hebrew name would likely have been similar to “Nancy”; perhaps “Nava”, meaning beautiful.
"Nava" was, I suspect, a descendant of the very people expelled from Spain, and landed in the New World.
(This matter of Nancy Hanks’ Jewish bloodline arises only on account of President Lincoln’s statements to the visiting delegation of Jews. Lincoln believed himself to be of Jewish parentage. He so declared.) The question naturally arises: If Nancy Hanks was Jewish, where did she come from? What is her history?
Extraordinary Lincoln material rests in the bowels of the New York Research Library. There I read about a Nancy Hanks who was run out of a town for “lewdness”. The dates and geography seem to match. And, in a published letter to Herndon one can read from a contemporary of Mr. Enloe, Nancy’s host, in which he writes of Enloe’s numerous daughters as “prostitutes”. Nancy was a long-time houseguest of the Enloe family. The brilliant historian, Jerome Corsi, believes that Enloe was the biological father of Abraham Lincoln. He also showed me evidence, a photograph of the son of Enloe. His physique was exactly that of Lincoln.
I suspect that the Nancy Hanks who was run out of a town, is our very Nancy. I am quite sure that Nancy was, literally, a force of nature. Perhaps the matrons of that community were flabbergasted by Nancy Hanks. (By the way, the very concept of lewdness was foreign to Nancy Hanks.) In my mind’s eye I can see this young woman, beautiful beyond imagination, magnificent black hair, flashing eyes, physically very strong --- an extraordinary physical presence, truly … Wonder Woman.
She possessed one quality in abundance: her love of adventure. And to this mix we must add another quality. This young woman had no fear. None whatsoever. She was, literally, fearless.
Nancy was fully committed to the greatest adventure a young woman could have on planet earth in the first years of the 19th Century. This was the Mother of Abraham Lincoln.
She was born in or close to 1784. She died in 1818, age around 34. Abraham was 9 years old. She drank the milk of a cow who had dined on a plant harmless to the cow and her baby (for whom the milk was intended by God) … yet fatal to humans. Dining on this stolen food, she died.
If Nancy was a Sephardic Jewess, she would certainly, absolutely, have imparted this fact to her son, Abraham. We know that Nancy read the Bible to Abraham. She would surely have told him that as she was Jewish, he was also Jewish. Abraham Lincoln was a Jew. He knew he was a Jew. His Mother told him that he was a Jew. He concealed this knowledge from the world, and even himself. He revealed it to the visiting delegation.
Lincoln concealed his Jewishness until General Order # 11. As it turned out, little attention was paid to the disclosure, and the matter faded away. The first public disclosure of Lincoln’s Jewish ancestry occurred at Rabbi Isaac Meyer Weiss’ memorial service immediately after the assassination.
Sephardic Jewry are the descendants of slaves sent by the Romans to their Western and North African Provinces. Long before the existence of German Jewry and its flowering, this community was the high example of the remnants of the Jewish nation destroyed by Rome.
At the end of the 15th Century, much of Spanish Jewry, small in number, were amongst the intellectual elite of Spain and the western world. Their expulsion was deeply damaging to Spain. It is said, in present day Spain, that the nation has not recovered from it. Interestingly, Spain is actively seeking Jewish immigrant descendants of the expelled to whom citizenship is generously offered.
Jews financed and manned every expedition of Columbus beginning with the first voyage of discovery. Their expulsion in 1492, and the discovery of the new world in 1492, are not co-incidental. They are closely related.
Nancy Hanks was her name. This great lady was the Mother of Abraham Lincoln.
Post-Script November 16, 2019
The family name, "Enloe", could have been a fictitious name, it meaning perhaps, "ended low", suggesting that the person who "ended low" started out "high".
If Abraham Enloe was the biological father of Abraham Lincoln, we ought to try to find as much about him as possible. Of course, that would be a major research project.
I think of him as somebody special, even exotic. The only physical description of Abraham Enloe which I have come across is that he was tall and dark haired.
Post-Script September 11, 2020
Please see the daguerreotype portrait of young Abraham Lincoln. He seems refined, highborn, "of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction." Do you not agree?
The bloodline of his father was, I think, identical to that of his Mother. It had to be! This distinguished young man of the daguerreotype is no mixed breed variety. He was, at age 9, a purebred, and highbred, Sephardic Jewish child whose foster father was, from birth, Thomas Lincoln.
Post-Script October 11, 2020
In a large sense Abraham Lincoln is the product of America, the great melting pot. His Mother died when the boy was 9 years old. Thomas Lincoln was not the boy’s biological father. That distinction fell to Abraham Enloe. Both mother and father of Abraham Lincoln were Sephardic Jews, an ancient aristocracy few in number then; and now, after the Holocaust, nearly extinct.
Post-Script February 1, 2021
This brilliant artist/scientist- a medical doctor/dentist/daguerreian- was, we know for certain, at the very sharp tip of 19th Century science. His knowledge of photography was, literally, encyclopedic. He was, in 1841, one of the few living souls qualified to write the encyclopedic entry for photography.
We ought to keep in mind that 1841 is very early for a daguerreotype, and to hold an 1841 daguerreotype of this quality is unheard of. Literally unheard of. The recognized world authority of such matters, Grant Romer, told me on two occasions, that he could not put a date on it before 1844. He admitted 1841 was possible. Merely possible. He stuck to 1844. Such is its quality.
The date of this daguerreotype is surely 1841. If it was not made in Louisville, it was made in St. Louis. There is a window whereby the daguerreotype could have been made in St. Louis. It is not likely, merely possible.