Talk:Abraham Lincoln (captain)

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He's Abraham Lincoln's grandfather! Why do we need to explain the importance of that? Without him there would have been no Abraham Lincoln. --Darth Borehd 06:58, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Redirect to Captain Abraham Lincoln

This article was not referenced and furthermore, full of errors. One error was that "Abraham Lincoln Sr." was never a style used by the individual in his life, or afterwards by historians to distinguish him from his famous grandson. I have redirected this page to a new page "Captain Abraham Lincoln", which follows the common usage. Janeky (talk) 09:20, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with this decision, as titles are normally not used for disambiguation according to Wikipedia Naming conventions. However, Captain Abraham Lincoln is clearly the better article, and should be merged or fully transplanted into this one. Lampman (talk) 09:33, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that historians commonly refer to Abraham Lincoln's grandfather as Captain Abraham Lincoln. Someone looking for an article on the grandfather would not search under "Sr." Would a page title "Abraham Lincoln (Captain)" be acceptable? Janeky (talk) 09:38, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

You got there right before me! This was what I was just writing: On the other hand, I can see that "Abraham Lincoln Sr." is not ideal, as this should only be used in cases "where the practice is well established" (see Senior and junior). I suggest using Qualifier between bracketing parentheses: "Abraham Lincoln (captain)". Lampman (talk) 09:43, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your response, and the links. There is so much to learn. "Abraham Lincoln (captain)" is acceptable to me, but I think I've messed up Wikipedia enough for tonight. I'll come back tomorrow and hope someone else has straightened it out. If not, I'll try again. Janeky (talk) 10:00, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I've moved the whole thing to Abraham Lincoln (captain), but you should probably have a look at it, as I don't know enough about the subject. There are a couple of discrepancies between the two articles, first of all, "Abraham Lincoln Sr." had the dates of his life to (March 18, 1744 – May 4, 1786) rather than (13 May 1744 – May 1786). Secondly, it said his middle name was Henry. Are these just corrections you've made? Lampman (talk) 10:22, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks so much for tidying this up. I wasn't able to get back to this as quickly as I wanted to. The differences between the articles are corrections. There is an alternate birthdate for Capt. Abraham Lincoln, but it has been long discredited, and anyway isn't the one given in the "Abraham Lincoln Sr." article. The commonly accepted birthdate comes from a family register kept in Capt. Abraham's brother John's family, where it is given as 14 May 1744 (old style); that would be, I believe, 25 May 1744 in modern terms, but the standard sources use 14 May without further comment. Middle names were pretty rare at this period, and I've never seen a middle name given for Capt. Abraham. The other errors in the old article– his parents' names, being raised by a widowed mother, and the idea that, after dying in Kentucky he was buried in Pennsylvania– are so far off that I think Capt. Abraham was confused with another individual of the same name. I'm not really into the Lincoln genealogy, but if someone can point me to an Abraham Lincoln of the proper time period who was a son of George Winston and Martha Lincoln, I would be very interested. Janeky (talk) 23:15, 19 January 2008 (UTC)