Page News & Courier
Heritage and Heraldry
A former Page citizen, Abraham Lincoln and the winds of war
Article of January 6, 2000
While Abraham Lincoln had no direct connections with Page County, his ancestry did have roots in the Shenandoah Valley. In 1767, John Lincoln, the great-grandfather of President Abraham Lincoln, acquired 600 acres of land on Linville Creek in Rockingham County. Dying around 1789, he lies buried at the southwest corner of his land just north of present day Edom. One of John's children, Abraham L. Lincoln served as a captain of a Virginia Company during the American Revolution. Captain Lincoln's son and the father of the President, Thomas, was born in 1778 while the family resided in Rockingham County. However, four years later, Captain Abraham and his son made their trek to Kentucky. After settling on the "frontier", Thomas' father was killed by Indians. In 1809, Abraham, the second child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln was born along Nolin Creek in Hardin County, Kentucky. Interestingly, Jacob, a younger brother of Captain Lincoln's, remained in Rockingham and was the progenitor of a line that produced a few of the Valley's Confederate soldiers.
In a letter dated August 9, 1860, one former resident of Page recalls having seen the president and his wife first-hand. It had been just eight years since George W. Kaufman, the son of Benjamin and Anna Kaufman, had "started from home for the first time." "I rode my Billy across the mountain to Newmarket, and Albert took him home, and this was the last I saw of Billy." By the time he drafted his letter to his sister Elizabeth and her husband James Robert Modesitt, George was making his living as a school teacher in Lincoln, Illinois.
"I was at Springfield yesterday" wrote Kaufman, "to a great Republican Convention, and saw a mighty Crowd of people there, there must have been sixty or eighty thousand . . ." at the "place of residence of Lincoln." "I went around to his house to see him, but Mrs. Lincoln told us he was up stairs lying down, he was so much fatigued, from the Continual pressure of the people rushing to see him. . . but he is only a man, & looks very much like Nicholas W. Yager, as to form & color, but politically a much blacker Republican. He is a very fine, sociable fellow, but I can not vote for him, and I do not think Ills. Will go for him in November next. But of course some of the strongest abolition States will vote for him any how, but I suppose you have heard enough of him at this time, yet one thing remains that I want you to hear, and that is, I want to see him beaten in Nov. for President of these united States."
Less than a year later, on April 23, 1861, George wrote once again of the times that had changed. "I fear the mail will be stopped between here and Virginia, owing to the Secession of Va. & if so we will not hear from each other until peace is made between the two sections of the Country, and that in all probability be a number of years, now that the War has Commenced. You wrote to me about singing Mt. Morris, It is a splendid tune, I should like to hear you sing it again But God knows whether or not I ever will. Raising Volunteer Companys for War is all the talk here, 200 men started from Lincoln last Monday, & still they are raising more, things are indeed in a deplorable Condition, . . . I believe there will be a bloody time of it."
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