Was Thomas Lincoln actually poor?

[Mike B.]

(07-08-2013 10:45 AM)irshgrl500 Wrote:  

(08-06-2012 08:29 AM)LincolnMan Wrote:  We all know the story of Abraham Lincoln being born and growing up in poverty. Is that actually the case? Certainly compared to others back East the Lincoln's were poor. But was Thomas Lincoln poor? I read he owned land, had farms, etc. By the standards of the West in his day-was he considered poor? Or have writers imposed their standards on the story? I wonder if Thomas would have considered himself poor?

Hello Bill,
I realize that it is nearly a year after your initial topic was started, which I am commenting. This is the very subject, which I too am posed. I've seen contradictions, over and over again, which state both that Thomas was very poor, and also that he was considered a prosperous landowner. Michael Burlingame has said in his books, and in interviews that it truly is an illusion to think that Thomas was some sort of prosperous landowner, and that he basically never rose much beyond poverty. I tend to trust Burlingame’s word, as it seems to be backed with tenacious research.

Karin

This is a great point.

A big part of the whole Lincoln was not poor goes to two things both in the 1920s.

In the 1920s, Rev. Louis Warren felt the need to make Lincoln's background as middle class and moral as possible...So he went out of his way to make sure in his re-creations that Lincoln's mother was not illigitemate. He also went to prove that Lincoln's father was an upstanding citizen. On this last point by the 1950s he went way overboard and had Lincoln practically worshipping his father.

Also, the 1920s was the time of the great "de-bunking" biographies, so the idea that Lincoln wasn't really poor fit into the idea that the de-bunkers like Edgar Lee Masters tried to say that Lincoln was simply representing the rich and corporations as a Whig.

My own view was that the Thomas Lincoln, that Lincoln remembered was a poor man, who was anti-intellectual, who hit Lincoln up for money when Lincoln became successful.

Is that the whole Thomas Lincoln? Of course not. But I think that is the Thomas, Lincoln for the most part remembered.