Description:

Lincoln Abraham

Captain Abraham Lincoln War Dated Revolutionary War ADS

 

ADS on oblong paper fragment inscribed overall and signed by President Abraham Lincoln's paternal grandfather and namesake Abraham Lincoln (1744-1786) as "Abraham Lincoln" at lower right. With expected toning, else near fine, measuring 4" x 1.5". From the Collection of Norman Boas of Seaport Autographs and recently purchased at Christie's December 5, 2017 sale. Accompanied by extensive modern provenance documentation.

 

On August 31, 1778, Captain Abraham Lincoln wrote:

 

"Recd of David Potts Thirty Pounds for his Delinquency in the 4 Class in Capt Sam Sands Comp. Pr Me Abraham Lincoln."

 

Grandfather Abraham Lincoln was a farmer and tanner who served as a Revolutionary War Captain of the Rockingham County, Virginia militia. Lincoln's 60-man company served under the command of General Lachlan McIntosh between 1776-1778 in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and he signed this note sometime during his service.

 

Grandfather Abraham Lincoln's friend Daniel Boone supposedly encouraged him to move his family from Virginia to Kentucky, where land was cheap and plentiful. In 1782, Grandfather Abraham Lincoln sold his Virginia farm, packed his belongings, and headed down Wilderness Trail through Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. He located his family on the Green River where he filed claims for 2000 acres of land along the western Kentucky frontier; this is where he would be killed by local Indians four years later.

 

16th U.S. President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) vividly recalled his family's account of his grandfather's death in the spring of 1786, and Illinois historian Louis A. Warren recounted the fatal Indian attack in an issue of the Filson Club History Quarterly published in 1931:

 

"Abraham Lincoln, the pioneer, with his three sons, Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas, ages fifteen, thirteen, and ten respectively, had been putting in a crop of corn in a clearing on his Long Run farm. At the close of day they started for Hughes Station about one half mile away, where the family was then living in one of the eight cabins within the station. On their way they were attacked by two or three Indians, and the father was killed at the first fusillade. Nearby was a new cabin which had been built by the Lincolns but was as yet unoccupied. Into this cabin darted Mordecai and Thomas, but Josiah continued on the run to the fort. Despising the ability of Mordecai's marksmanship, an Indian stepped out of the thicket to get the scalp of the massacred Abraham. Mordecai within the cabin took aim at a silver pendant on the breast of the Indian and brought him down. The settlers, warned by the firing and hearing the story of the presence of red men from Josiah, started in pursuit of the remaining Indians."

 

10-year-old Thomas Lincoln, President Abraham Lincoln's father, later moved from Kentucky to Indiana and later to Coles County, Illinois.

 

With extensive provenance material including: autograph dealer Norman Boas' original catalog description; June 13, 1988 correspondence on "University of Virginia Library, Manuscripts Department / Alderman Library" letterhead from Acting Curator of Manuscripts Ann L.S. Southwell to Norman Boas; July 8, 1988 correspondence from Norman Boas to Michael Plunkett, Manuscript Curator of the same institution; undated correspondence on "A Journal for the Lincoln Collector" letterhead to Norman Boas regarding a 1914 auction sale of Grandfather Abraham Lincoln's signature; a photocopy of Grandfather Abraham Lincoln's 1777 account book showing an example of his signature; and more.

 

Provenance: Ex-Christie's December 5, 2017 sale; Ex-Norman Boas, Seaport Autographs

 

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