"Nancy Hanks!" "Nancy Hanks!"

[RJNorton]

Brilliant, Bill! You are correct.

Jesse Head was the minister who married Nancy Hanks and Thomas Lincoln in 1806. Quoting from Carl Sandburg:

"The Reverend Jesse Head arrived on his gray mare. He was a man they rhymed about:

His nose is long and his hair is red,
And he goes by the name of Jesse Head.

A hater of sin, he liked decency and good order and could pause in a sermon to step from the pulpit and throw out a disorderly mocker who had had a few drinks. The bride and groom stood up before him. He pronounced them man and wife and wrote for the county clerk that on June 12, 1806, Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks had been joined together in the holy estate of matrimony "agreeable to the rites and ceremonies of the Methodist Episcopal Church."

Then came "the infare." One who was there remembered, "We had bear meat, venison, wild turkey and ducks, eggs wild and tame, maple sugar lumps tied on a string to bite off for coffee or whisky, syrup in big gourds, peach and honey, a sheep barbecued whole over coals of wood burned in a pit, and covered with green boughs to keep the juices in; and a race for the whisky bottle."

Bill, you win free tickets to the Lincoln Marriage Temple in Harrodsburg, Kentucky.