am, Isaac, Jacob, Thomas, and John. Of
these, Abraham went to North Carolina, there married Mary Shipley, and
by her had sons Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas, who was born in 1778. In
1780 or 1782, as it is variously stated, this family moved to Kentucky.
There, one day in 1784, the father, at his labor in the field, was shot
by lurking Indians. His oldest son, working hard by, ran to the house
for a gun; returning toward the spot where lay his father's body, he saw
an Indian in the act of seizing his brother, the little boy named
Thomas. He fired, with happy aim; the Indian fell dead, and Thomas
escaped to the house. This Thomas it was who afterward became the father
of Abraham Lincoln.[8] Of the other sons of Mordecai (great-uncles of
the President), Thomas also went to Kentucky, Isaac went to Tennessee,
while Jacob and John stayed in Virginia, and begat progeny who became in
later times ferocious rebels, and of whom one wrote a very comical
blustering letter to his relative the President;[9] and probably
another, bearing oddly enough the name of Abraham, was a noted
fighter.[10] It is curious to observe of what migratory stock we have
here the sketch. Mr. Shackford calls attention to the fact that through
six successive generations all save one were "pioneers in the settlement
of new countries," thus: 1. Samuel came from England to Hingham,
Massachusetts. 2. Mordecai lived and died at Scituate, close by the
place of his birth. 3. Mordecai moved, and settled in Pennsylvania, in
the neighborhood which afterward became Berks County, while it was still
wilderness. 4. John moved into the wilds of Virginia. 5. Abraham went to
the backwoods of Kentucky shortly after Boone's settlement. 6. Thomas
moved first into the sparsely settled parts of Indiana, and thence went
onward to a similar region in Illinois.

Thus in time was corroborated what Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1848 in one
of the above-mentioned letters to Hon. Solomon Lincoln: "We have a vague
tradition that my great-grandfather went from Pennsylvania to Virginia,
and that he was a Quaker." It is of little consequence that this "vague
tradition" was stoutly contradicted by the President's father, the
ignorant Thomas, who indignantly denied that either a Puritan or a
Quaker could be found in the line of his forbears, and who certainly
seemed to set heredity at defiance if such were the case. But while thus
repudiating others, Thomas himself was in some danger of being
repu