New Light On Lincoln's Boyhood

[Joe Di Cola]

(05-26-2015 12:40 PM)Gene C Wrote:  An article from February 1920 Atlantic Monthly

I found this in the second paragraph interesting,
"The family of Thomas Lincoln, father of Abraham Lincoln, while in their Indiana home, consisted of his two children, Abraham and Sarah, and a flock of orphaned or partly orphaned , children from four different families. Among these was a niece, Sophie Hanks, just a month younger than Abraham, who lived in the family of Thomas Lincoln until she was married."

This was new to me. It also seems the author did not think highly of Dennis Hanks.
After that first page, I found sections 3 and 4 of the article the most interesting.

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/politics...orglin.htm

Based on this article, seems many historians and writers have not been fair to Thomas Lincoln.

As far as I could ever tell, this article was perhaps the first ever to mention Sophie Hanks. Warren, who extensively researched Lincoln's Indiana years, never mentioned her. Neither did William Barton, Sandburg, or Thomas. She is cited in Wilson and Davis "Herndon's Informants" in an appendix; however, there is no Herndon interview or letter-exchange with her in the Herndon materials, per se. In Tarbell's "The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln, there is no mention of her. She is included in Burlingame's two volume biography of Lincoln.

One more thought...I would have to check this by looking at the Burlingame end-notes at Knox College (and I do not have the time to do this right now), because it would be interesting to see if Burlingame's inclusion of the Sophie Hanks story is based solely on the Atlantic Monthly article. If this is so, I might think about taking her story with a grain of salt since her son's recollections of his mother's recollections could be self-promotional rather than based on fact. What do all of you think about this?

Joe