His father, Thomas Lincoln, was sixth in direct line of descent
from Samuel Lincoln, who emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1638.
Following the prevailing drift of American settlement, these descendants
had, during a century and a half, successively moved from Massachusetts
to New Jersey, from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, from Pennsylvania to
Virginia, and from Virginia to Kentucky; while collateral branches of the
family eventually made homes in other parts of the West. In Pennsylvania
and Virginia some of them had acquired considerable property and local
prominence.
In the year 1780, Abraham Lincoln, the President's grandfather, was able
to pay into the public treasury of Virginia "one hundred and sixty
pounds, current money," for which he received a warrant, directed to the
"Principal Surveyor of any County within the commonwealth of Virginia,"
to lay off in one or more surveys for Abraham Linkhorn, his heirs or
assigns, the quantity of four hundred acres of land. The error in
spelling the name was a blunder of the clerk who made out the warrant.
With this warrant and his family of five children--Mordecai, Josiah,
Mary, Nancy, and Thomas--he moved to Kentucky, then still a county of
Virginia, in 1780, and began opening a farm. Four years later, while at
work with his three boys in the edge of his clearing, a party of
Indians, concealed in the brush, shot and killed him.
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