Lincoln's birthday

[Eva Elisabeth]

-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).

That's interesting - I've never noticed nor recall having read. I wonder why. Was she a preemie (in case - how likely was survival in those days at the frontier?) or was it what we call a "praline wedding" (bride containing a sweet filling)? Or simply a misremembered date of birth or "typo"?

[RJNorton]

Good question, Eva. I do not know. I know that Lincoln expert, Dr. Wayne Temple, has speculated that the wedding of Abraham and Mary Lincoln may have been a "praline wedding."

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-10...-mary-todd

[Gene C]

Where do I begin?
Quote from the above article
"Author Wayne Temple speculates that Todd, after fear of becoming a spinster as she neared age 24, seduced Lincoln during tryst at a a friends home leading to her pregnancy and their hastily arranged marriage Nov. 4, 1842."

Robert Lincoln was born Aug 1, 1843, nine months following their wedding day. Count em' 1 -December, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 -August. That's right 9 months.
And at a friends home? I don't think so.

I don't know about pralines, but Mr. Temple here is missing a few chips in his cookies.

[L Verge]

I am surprised that Dr. Temple would espouse such speculation. I am a prime example of someone who got pregnant on her honeymoon and whose daughter was born three weeks before her due date. I'm sure the old bitties of the neighborhood started counting their fingers, but luckily (and unluckily for my daughter), she was born severely jaundiced and remained in the hospital for ten days to let the lamps do their work. She missed having a total blood transfusion by two points on whatever scale is used. I think that hushed the snickering crowds. I sympathize with the Lincolns.

P.S. I absolutely love good, southern pralines, but will not eat them again after hearing their reference here!

[Steve]

I read it as Dr. Temple implying that Robert's birthday was faked to make it look like there was no problem with the dates. The Lincolns were married in Springfield and Robert was born there. Temple's theory is absurd. Mary wouldn't be able to know if she was pregnant when they married if Robert's birth date is correct. Chronologically, the theory is only possible if they fudged Robert's birth date and possibly hid him in their house for a month or so to alleviate suspicion. How would that escape notice, especially with Lincoln's congressional campaign a few years later?

[Susan Higginbotham]

In his book, in addition to Robert's speedy arrival, Temple bases his theory that Mary trapped Lincoln into marriage on James Matheny's recollection of Lincoln telling him "I shall have to marry that girl." He even interprets Lincoln's remark to Joshua Speed that his son Robert "has a great deal of that sort of mischief, that is the offspring of much animal spirits" as a possible reference to an illicit conception! I think that's stretching things greatly; I read the remark as simply saying that Robert's "animal spirits" caused him to be full of mischief.

Michael Burlingame has also embraced the trapped-into-marriage theory, although he at least has the decency to admit that it can't be proved.

[Steve]

That's interesting - I've never noticed nor recall having read. I wonder why. Was she a preemie (in case - how likely was survival in those days at the frontier?) or was it what we call a "praline wedding" (bride containing a sweet filling)? Or simply a misremembered date of birth or "typo"?

The simplest explanation is that the date is wrong, but is it the correct explanation? And if Sarah's birth date is correct there's all manner of theory-crafting to be done on what could've happened with no real answer possible now.

I noticed that Roger mentioned in another comment thread that this Bible dates from 1841, if that's correct (I get confused by all the different Lincoln Bibles sometimes), then Thomas would've had to have another Bible for Lincoln to read as a kid. Lincoln could've copied the dates from that Bible. There's one problem with that theory. If Thomas was recording births and deaths contemporaneosly, why isn't the infant Thomas' birth and death included in the record Lincoln wrote?

Burlingame in his biography of Lincoln gives Thomas Lincoln's birth as "around 1776". I've seen the c.1776 date on the web as well. I don't know what their reasoning is but it would mean the date in the Bible is wrong. But I don't think the accuracy of Thomas or Nancy's births would necessarily mean that Abraham and Sarah's births would be wrong.

[Gene C]

I doubt Robert's birth date is wrong.
As I recall, at the time of Robert's birth, they were living at the Globe Tavern. (see last two paragraphs)
https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historycu...field1.htm

Living in a boarding house, and a small town, the gossip certainly would have followed the Lincoln's since he was a prominent politician, and some one (especially Herndon) would have seriously mentioned it long before Wayne Temple.

[STS Lincolnite]

Burlingame in his biography of Lincoln gives Thomas Lincoln's birth as "around 1776".

I'm curious to know where Burlingame came up with the c.1776 date or what sources he consulted to make that determination.

I have visited Thomas Lincoln's grave site and the current marker there lists his birthdate as 6 January 1778. I also have a photo of the marker that was there before the current one. When I get home I will check to see if that had a date on it. From what I understand, the birth date of 6 January 1778 was calculated from Abraham Lincoln reporting that his father was 73 years and 11 days old at the time of his death. Based on this, the National Park Service considers 1778 to be Thomas Lincoln's birth year.

---

If Thomas was recording births and deaths contemporaneosly, why isn't the infant Thomas' birth and death included in the record Lincoln wrote?

I highly doubt that Thomas himself was recording anything contemporaneously. By pretty much every account I have ever read, he and Nancy Hanks Lincoln were almost certainly illiterate. Either someone wrote a record for them or the "vital dates" were simply passed along orally until someone who could write took the time to record them. The latter seems probable to me. That idea or thought of course does not provide for any hard documentation that is able to be corroborated by another source (as far as definitive birth dates) but as I have stated before, I find Abraham Lincoln himself to be the most reliable source on the matter we are likely to find at this point.

As far as the infant Thomas, if it wasn't written at the time, I guess it doesn't seem all that strange to me that nothing would have been recorded later seeing as how he didn't live long. I think people viewed such things differently in the past than we might today. My own grandmother had a sister who died as an infant. She knew nothing about the sister until she happened to visit the graves of her grandparents when she was a young adult. And there was a grave for her sister in the same plot. She told me about that many, many years later and I asked her how she didn't know she had another sister before that. Her response was "well, she died and was gone so nobody talked about her. So how would I know?" Well I guess I can understand that. Maybe with having died in the early 1800s in Kentucky with a grave that was left behind when the family moved to Indiana then Illinois, young Thomas was just sort of a forgotten part of the family or an afterthought and therefore not recorded later on. Sad, but I don't think it is outside the realm of possibility.

[RJNorton]

There is yet another birth date I've seen for Thomas Lincoln. In The Ancestry of Abraham Lincoln by J. Henry Lea and J. R. Hutchinson, Thomas' date of birth is given as January 20, 1780.

Lea and Hutchinson write:

"Thomas Lincoln, born in Rockingham County, Virginia, 20 January, 1780. He married, 12 June, 1806, at Beechland, Ky., Nancy Hanks."

IMO, Lea and Hutchinson are incorrect. I feel the date given by Scott is accepted by most historians.

Also, I agree with Gene that Robert's birthday was not faked. I agree for the same reasons Gene stated.

On July 26, 1843, in a letter to Joshua Speed, Lincoln wrote, "We are but two, as yet." Sounds to me that Lincoln knew things were getting close.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Re.: "But I don't think the accuracy of Thomas or Nancy's births would necessarily mean that Abraham and Sarah's births would be wrong."

Yes - absolutely independent "cases".

I agree with Gene and Roger on "Robert". And, as Gene said, nine months is quite perfectly in line with honeymoon.

As for Sarah - while we will probably never know and can only list possible explanations none of which yet may hit the thruth - does anyone (Dr. Houmes...?) know how survival chances looked like for preemies at the frontier in those days?

[Steve]

As too Thomas's age, a 1780 birth is too late. A February 14, 1800 tax assessment listed him as above the age of 21.

I have a link to a Google Books description of it in a book by Barton.

https://books.google.com/books?id=ZOZBAA...80&f=false

[RJNorton]

Has anyone ever come across anything definitive on Thomas Lincoln, Jr.'s birth year? I have books that put it as early as 1811 and as late as 1816. Perhaps the most common year given is 1812.

[ELCore]

My own grandmother had a sister who died as an infant. She knew nothing about the sister until she happened to visit the graves of her grandparents when she was a young adult. And there was a grave for her sister in the same plot. She told me about that many, many years later and I asked her how she didn't know she had another sister before that. Her response was "well, she died and was gone so nobody talked about her. So how would I know?"

My family suspects that my maternal grandmother had been in a similar situation. My mother had always believed that her mother had two sisters and three brothers, my grandmother being the third child and third girl: all the boys were born later.

I was doing research at Ancestry.com. I was looking for my grandmother's grandfather, whose name I knew to be James. That was her father's name, also. Two James's popped up in the 1910 census for my grandmother's family. At first, I thought her grandfather must have been living with her family at the time. Then, I looked closer, and noticed that the second James was listed as the son of the head of the household, not his father! Further research revealed that he had lived for only 10 months. My grandmother was born the next year.

Nobody in my mother's family remembers my grandmother ever mentioning that an older sibling had died in infancy. And we suspect she never knew. Her older sisters were little children at the time, so they wouldn't remember; and, if the family chose not to talk about it, nobody in my grandmother's generation would have known. We only found out about him because he lived and died in a census year.