Samuel Lincoln

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Samuel Lincoln (date of birth unknown; baptised in Hingham, Norfolk, England, August 24, 1622,^[1] as the son of Edward Lincoln; died in Hingham, Massachusetts, May 26, 1690), was the progenitor of many notable United States political figures, including his great-great-great-great-grandson, President Abraham Lincoln, Maine governor Enoch Lincoln, Benjamin Lincoln, who was Secretary of War under the Articles of Confederation, and Levi Lincoln, Sr. and Levi Lincoln, Jr., each of whom would serve both as a Massachusetts Representatives, and as governor of that state. Because of his line of descent, his arrival in the United States, and the availability of some information about his life, Samuel Lincoln is generally the starting point of accounts of the ancestry of that line.^[2]

Having grown up in poverty due to a family squabble in which his wealthy grandfather had disinherited his earlier children, Samuel Lincoln became an apprentice to a weaver named Francis Lawes. (Samuel Lincoln's father Edward abandoned his home at Swanton Morley near Hingham after he was cut out out of his father Richard's will, and relocated to some small acreage at Hingham.)^[3][4] In 1637, Lincoln left England for the New World with Lawes' family, embarking on a ship named John & Dorothy. Although most accounts indicate that he was 15 years old at the time, it has been suggested that he misrepresented his age in order to permitted to make the voyage.^[5] He sailed for the colony of Massachusetts, where his older brother Thomas had already settled, and where his brother assisted him by providing a parcel of land. Lincoln helped to build the Old Ship Church in Hingham.^[6] He married Martha Lyford of Ireland around 1649, and the couple had eleven children, three of whom died in their infancy, but another three of whom lived into their eighties. Lincoln's eldest son, born August 25, 1650, was also named Samuel. Genealogists have noted the common and repeated use of certain Biblical names in the Lincoln family, particularly Abraham, Samuel, Isaac, Jacob, and Mordecai, which was not uncommon among the early Puritan settlers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.^[7] So there were a number of other Samuel Lincolns, aside from his son Samuel, descended from the original settler in following generations.

In 1937, the 300th anniversary of Samuel Lincoln's arrival in Massachusetts was commemorated with the dedication of a tablet at the Old Ship Church in Hingham, Massachusetts. President Abraham Lincoln is honored by a bust in the church of St. Andrews in Hingham, Norfolk, Hingham.^[8]

[edit] Sources

• Waldo Lincoln, History of the Lincoln Family : An Account of the Descendants of Samuel Lincoln of Hingham, Massachusetts, 1637-1920 (1923) ISBN 0788414895.
• Lincoln's Youth: Indiana Years, Seven to Twenty-One, 1816-1830, Indiana University Press (2002) ISBN 0-87195-063-4.
• Genealogy of Samuel Lincoln.
• LINCOLN (Samuel), from George Lincoln, The History of the Town of Hingham Massachusetts, The Genealogies (1893).
• English church reaches out to Lincoln land; Building where president's ancestors once worshipped in need of major repairs.
• The Ancestry of Abraham Lincoln, James Henry Lea, John Robert Hutchinson, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1909

[edit] References