Lincoln's birthday

[Steve]

(01-17-2017 08:02 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Good idea to ckeck this, and one valid argument! (Just curious - in order to qualify I wonder how age was proven in those days? If someone couldn't come up with a birth certificate?)

Basically, it was just the word of the voter, maybe an affidavit in some jurisdictions. Even though there's an element of self-interest in that, I still think it's more reliable than the 1850 census record from twenty years later that's off by a year. Especially in an era when birthdays weren't usually celebrated and a census taker just shows up at your door. But that still doesn't explain how Lincoln obtained the non-Johnston dates to inscribe in his father's Bible after Thomas Lincoln's death.

A few more stray observations on the Bible record:

- There's no marriage date listed for Daniel Johnston and Sarah Bush

-There's only a month and year listed for the marriage of Lincoln's sister and Aaron Grigsby, possibly indicating Lincoln was going off memory and not a written record for that event.

-Sarah's birth is listed as February 10, 1807, eight months after the June 12, 1806 marriage of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks (which is a date independently confirmed by the marriage bond record).