New Light On Lincoln's Boyhood

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Below is some info re. Sophie (Sophia) Hanks. I hope that I do not bore anyone with all of this. The article is from February 1997 and written by Lincoln researcher Paul H. Verduin and entitled: LINCOLN'S LONG FORGOTTEN FOSTER SISTER REDISCOVERD: SOPHIA HANKS, WHOSE CHILDREN FOUGHT FOR NORTH AND SOUTH.

"Four years ago, I presented to a stunned audience at the first International Lincoln Conference, sponsored by the prestigious Abraham Lincoln Association and the Louisiana State University at Shreveport, my discoveries in archival documents concerning a mysterious, long forgotton, illegitimate foster sister of President Lincoln.

The Civil War president's foster sister's name was Sophia Hanks. She was just a month younger than Abraham Lincoln, and when she and Abe were both nine year old children, she moved into the Lincoln's southern Indiana log cabin for several years, after the same wave of mild sickness struck down Abe's mother and both of Sophia's previous foster parents. Sophia Hanks Lynch Legrand is her full name, when one strings together her maiden name with the last names of her successive husbands, Indiana Hoosier Dillings Lynch and John Legrand of Indiana and Missouri.

Sophia outlived both her husbands, saw her children fight on both sides during the Civil War, and died in 1893 in an Arkansas Ozarks mountain cabin at the ripe old age of 84. Sophia told her children all about her childhood and teenage years with her tall, strong cousin Abe, and eventually, in 1909 and in 1910, her children talked.

For reasons that become obvious, Lincoln biographers of that era didn't want to listen. But scholars and family tradition now agree Sophia Hanks was biologically Abe's cousin, her mother and his being half-sisters. Astonishingly, she was one of six illegitimate children of a Kentucky aunt of Lincoln's named Sarah Hanks. What's more, the evidence is beyond a reasonable doubt that both Aunt Sarah Hanks and Lincoln's mother Nancy Hanks were also illegitimate! Needless to say, President Lincoln never said anything about Sophia or her mother Sarah, in public or at any other time. But Dennis Hanks, Lincoln's step brother-in-law and a cousin of both Abe and Sarah, wrote President Lincoln in 1864 that he had got a letter from her, and she was finding it hard to believe that "her cousin" from the Indiana days was the same man who had become the president of the United States!

In the same letter, Dennis wrote to Lincoln that Sophia's sons were "all in the army, Vicksburg." But, Dennis didn't tell Lincoln that Sophia's oldest son Dennis who had moved south, had been in the 22nd Mississippi Infantry until his capture at Vicksburg by Union Troops on May 17, 1863, and subsequent imprisonment. He also didn't say that Sophia's brother had died while serving with the 2nd Mississippi Partisans. But two of Sophia's sons did join the Union's 33rd Missouri Infantry, though James LeGrand deserted after three months. After the war he became an Ozark county doctor, when noted American Civil engineer and educator, Arthur E. Morgan, interviewed him and two of Sophia's other children in 1909 and 1910. Many of their stories about Abe Lincoln and their relationships to him were published by Dr. Morgan in the Atlantic Monthly in 1920, but essential veracity of their neglected accounts was untested until my research of seventy years later. No wonder Lincoln avoided the subject of his mother's family."

Ancestry.com gives 6 children of Sophie’s marriage (June 13, 1827) with Dillings Lynch: Dennis (1829), James, Sara = Sally (1833), John (1835 - 1927), Nancy (1837 - 1922) and Elizabeth (1840). And 2 children of Sophie’s marriage (October 4, 1842) with Legrand : James = “The Doctor” (1844) and Rebecca (1853). “The Doctor” was Mr. Morgan's chief source of information for his article in the Atlantic Monthly, published in 1920. Stated is that “The Doctor” had one “full sister”.

When Sophie died (in November1893 or 1895) three children were living in different parts of the Ozarks. These three children are:
1. John Lynch, who lived in 1909 east of Iron Mountain, Mo. Very old, memory failing. He was a voter in 1861, and voted against Lincoln, and is thus older than “The Doctor”
2. Nancy Davidson, maiden name not given, living in 1909 with her husband at Limestone Valley, Ark.
3. "The Doctor" = James Legrand, born in Dubois County, Indiana. In the spring of 1847 he moved from Indiana to St. Francis County, Mo. Taught school, served in Civil War, and "practiced physic" living in Jasper, Ark., 1874-1909 since when he has lived in Harrison, Ark., having given up his practice. In January 1920 he was very sick with pneumonia.