Lincoln Relatives

[L Verge]

During a special program at Surratt House yesterday, members from New Jersey arrived and handed me a copy of an undated, unsourced article from a Pennsylvania newspaper relative to "Lincoln's Schuylkill Cousins." For those with a bend towards Lincoln genealogy - especially Ed Steers - you may be familiar with these "cousins."

They are descended through Lincoln's great-great grandfather, Mordecai, and his daughter, Mary, who was born in New Jersey, but grew up in a stone house that still stands on the east bank of the Schuylkill River in Exeter Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania. She married Francis Yarnall, a surveyor, in 1741, and in a few years, the couple moved to North Manheim Township and built a mill. They later moved on to Taylorsville in Barry Township, where most of their descendants still live under the name Yarnall or Yarnell.

It's a lengthy article, but rather amusing in that, while they know their kinship to our famous President, they seldom mention it or own up to it. One family member commented on the fact that Mordecai owned a slave named Jack and another pointed out that one of Mordecai's sons married a cousin of Daniel Boone.

There is a book on the subject that mentions a tie even to Mary Todd. It seems that the first court proceeding in Schuylkill County was held in 1812, with the first judge, Robert Porter, being a grand-uncle of Mary Todd. He presided over the first trial, and the first defendant was Amos Yarnall, who was convicted of assault and battery and ordered to pay court expenses and a fine of fifty cents.

Both Mary Lincoln Yarnall and her husband, Francis, lie in unmarked graves in the Reed's Cemetery (sometimes called "Bickel's") on private land near Taylorsville. The stones that once marked their graves were washed away by flooding from the nearby Mahanoy River years ago, but supposedly some of the elderly residents in the area can point out the approximate location.