Lincoln's Birth

[kerry]

I've been on a newspaper research binge, and the things I have found . . .

A lot of it is highly interesting and credible, and I'm working on compiling it. But just as much of it consists of people over age 100 telling Lincoln stories that are clearly not true. If they are over 100, you should probably not publish their reminiscences. I don't mean to be discriminatory - I think Cornelius Cole practiced law until age 102, and he seemed to retain his sharpness, but he also didn't give especially detailed reminiscences about the Lincolns. He was more focused on how he grew up before trains and women's rights and now his great-granddaughter had just gotten her pilot's license - what a life!

In 1914, a 104 year old woman announced her intention to exercise her voting rights, and described in detail being married to Frank Todd, Mary's brother. This story circulated everywhere with no one checking to see if Frank Todd existed. I just looked it up to check the name, and found out that it was debunked when it got national coverage and was seen by relatives. It's insisted Frank lied to her. She claims to have been visited by Robert, who denied that. I'm pretty sure she just got very confused in her final years. The headline reads "Will Die Firm in Unfounded Belief."

Then you have the odd people who steal someone else's Lincoln reminiscences word-for-word. It is bizarre to track how the stories develop - and totally fascinating.

And then, while they unquestioningly publish completely false tales, I come across these brief interviews with people who were clearly could have filled in big holes in the record, but who were never sought out at any length by the reporters who published every "He Knew Lincoln" article they could find. Tarbell at least made significant efforts in this area, and they were limited by the technology of the time, but so much was left undone. I want to get in a time machine. I mean, it was the norm to put "Knew Lincoln" or "Knew Mrs. Lincoln" in every obituary that could possibly make a claim to it. In 1909, every newspaper did 100 interviews with people who knew Lincoln. But a large portion of the time, they missed the people who were worth hearing from! Things improved significantly once it became okay for women to talk to newspapers, but not nearly enough.

I ignored almost any story relating to Lincoln's birth or childhood because I think the accounts are completely unreliable. If you read the Lincoln Financial Foundation Files, a ton of it is the then-director of the Foundation replying to people who insist their grandparents lived next to Lincoln as a boy or knew his true parents or whatever. And they're very sincere and don't seem too crazy. They just believed what their grandparents said. The director tries to nicely tell them their grandparents are liars. "Family traditions" are common but highly suspect. The fact is that most people in that community were trying to get by and most weren't literate and probably didn't live to be too old. Those that remained were deluged by popular Lincoln stories and absorbed them. Dennis Hanks and his family are pretty much the only ones I find very plausible, and somehow Dennis lived into his 90s. It's incredible how many people did make it to those ages back then -- but at a certain point, they need to stop being interviewed. I did find one case where after the interview concluded, the daughter of the man told the journalist he was confused and just read a lot of Lincoln books and repeated them, so it couldn't be published. At least she had the courage to say it.