The first ancestor of the line of whom we have knowledge was Samuel
Lincoln, of Norwich, England, who came to Hingham, Massachusetts, in
1638, and died there. He left a son, Mordecai, whose son, of the same
name,--and it is a name which persists in every branch of the family,
[Footnote: The Lincolns, in naming their children, followed so strict
a tradition that great confusion has arisen in the attempt to trace
their genealogy. For instance, Abraham Lincoln, of Chester County, son
of one Mordecai and brother of another, the President's ancestors,
left a fair estate, by will, to his children, whose names were John,
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Mordecai, Rebecca, and Sarah--precisely the
same names we find in three collateral families.]--removed to
Monmouth, New Jersey, and thence to Amity township, now a part of now
a part of Berks County, Pennsylvania, where he died in 1735, fifty
years old. From a copy of his will, recorded in the office of the
Register in Philadelphia, we gather that he was a man of considerable
property. In the inventory of his effects, made after his death, he is
styled by the appraisers, "Mordecai Lincoln, Gentleman." His son John
received by his father's will "a certain piece of land lying in the
Jerseys, containing three hundred acres," the other sons and daughters
having been liberally provided for from the Pennsylvania property.
This John Lincoln left New Jersey some years later, and about 1750
established himself in Rockingham County, Virginia. He had five sons,
to whom he gave the names which were traditional in the family:--
Abraham, the pioneer first mentioned,--Isaac, Jacob, Thomas, and John.
Jacob and John remained in Virginia; the former was a soldier in the
War of the Revolution, and took part as lieutenant in a Virginia
regiment at the siege of Yorktown. Isaac went to a place on the
Holston River in Tennessee; Thomas followed his brother to Kentucky,
lived and died there, and his children then emigrated to Tennessee
[Footnote: It is an interesting coincidence for the knowledge of which