Nancy Hanks' lineage

[RJNorton]

Here is Michael Burlingame's note regarding this alleged Thomas Lincoln photo in Abraham Lincoln: A Life:


"There is no authenticated photograph of Thomas Lincoln, though one purporting to be of him has been widely reproduced. R. Gerald McMurtry, “Was Thomas Lincoln Photographed?” Lincoln Herald 4(1944): 24; [Mark E. Neely, Jr.], “Was Thomas Lincoln Photographed?” Lincoln Lore, no. 1577 (July 1969), 1-3. The nose on the gentleman in the photo is not as large as the one that Thomas Lincoln was reported to have had. W. H. Cunningham, a journalist who interviewed John J. Hall (husband of Thomas's stepdaughter, Matilda Johnston), reported that “No photograph or likeness was ever taken of Thos. Lincoln.” Greenup, Illinois, Press, 22 September 1895. Hall allegedly said that he and Sarah Bush Lincoln insisted that Thomas have “a picture taken just a year or two before his death, but he neglected to have it done.” Statement by John Hall, in the notes of Charles Coleman, in Robert W. Sterling, ed., “Thomas Lincoln: Father of the Nation’s Sixteenth President,” Eastern Illinois University Research and Review Series 4 (August 1993): 21. Robert Todd Lincoln said he had “never heard of any picture of my grandfather, Thomas Lincoln.” Robert Todd Lincoln to Isaac Markens, Washington, 13 February 1918, Paul M. Angle, ed., A Portrait of Abraham Lincoln in Letters by His Oldest Son (Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 1968), 56."