distinguished families, -- second families, perhaps
I should say. My mother . . . was of a family
of the name of Hanks, some of whom now remain
in Adams, some others in Macon, counties, Illi-
nois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lin-
coln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Vir-
ginia, to Kentucky, about 1781 or 1782. . . .
His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia
from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to
identify them with the New England family of the
same name ended in nothing more definite than a
similarity of Christian names in both families,
such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abra-
ham, and the like."

This effort to connect the president with the
Lincolns of Massachusetts was afterward carried
forward by others, who felt an interest greater
than his own in establishing the fact. Yet if he
had expected the quest to result satisfactorily, he
would probably have been less indifferent about it;
for it is obvious that, in common with all Ameri-
cans of the old native stock, he had a strenuous
desire to come of "respectable people;" and his
very reluctance to have his apparently low extrac-
tion investigated is evidence that he would have
been glad to learn that he belonged to an ancient
and historical family of the old Puritan Common-
wealth, settlers not far from Plymouth Rock, and
immigrants not long after the arrival of the May.
flower. This descent has at last been traced by
the patient genealogist.

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