Individual Details

Nancy Hanks

(5 Feb 1784 - 5 Oct 1818)


From Wikipedia:
Nancy Hanks was born the illegitimate daughter of Lucy Hanks in what was then part of Hampshire County, Virginia. Today it is Mineral County, West Virginia. Years later, her son Abraham reportedly told his law partner William Herndon that his maternal grandfather was "a well-bred Virginia farmer or planter. In 1863 during the American Civil War, West Virginia, where slavery was limited and many people supported the North, was admitted to the Union as a separate state, having seceded from the Confederate state of Virginia.
Lucy Hanks moved with Nancy to follow her sister Elizabeth Hanks Sparrow and her husband Thomas to Washington County, Kentucky. There she married Thomas' brother Henry Sparrow. Lucy placed her daughter Nancy with Elizabeth and Thomas Sparrow, who essentially raised the girl. Nancy would have learned the skills and crafts a woman needed on the frontier to cultivate crops, and clothe and feed her family. Hanks became an excellent seamstress, working at that before her marriage.

On June 12, 1806, Hanks married Thomas Lincoln. Lincoln had proposed to her in his childhood home at what is now Lincoln Homestead State Park in Washington County, Kentucky.[4] A record of their marriage license is held at the county courthouse. They had three children:
Sarah Lincoln (February 10, 1807 – January 20, 1828)
Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865)
Thomas Lincoln (died in infancy, 1812)

In 1816, the Lincoln family moved to Spencer County in southern Indiana and proceeded to homestead at Little Pigeon Creek Settlement. That year Indiana became a state.
While living at Little Pigeon Creek Settlement, Nancy Hanks Lincoln died of "milk sickness" on October 5, 1818. Several people died that fall from the illness, including her maternal aunt Elizabeth and uncle Thomas Sparrow. It was caused by settlers drinking the milk or eating the meat of cows that had eaten the white snakeroot. The plant contains the potent toxin temetrol, which is passed through the milk. The migrants from the East were unfamiliar with the Midwestern plant and its effects. In the nineteenth century before people understood the cause of the illness, thousands in the Midwest died of milk sickness. Nancy Lincoln was thirty-four when she died. Her nine-year old son Abraham assisted his father in the making of her coffin by whittling the wooden pegs that held the planks together. The eleven-year-old Sarah cared for Abraham until their father remarried the next year.
Nancy Hanks Lincoln's grave is located in what has been named the Pioneer Cemetery, also known as the Nancy Hanks Lincoln Cemetery. At least twenty unmarked and eight marked graves are at the site; Lincoln is buried near Nancy Rusher Brooner, a neighbor whom she cared for, but who died from milk sickness two weeks before Lincoln. Also buried here are Elizabeth (Hanks) and Thomas Sparrow, Nancy Lincoln's maternal aunt and uncle.


Another version of who raised Nancy - I believe this is unfounded as some sources even state Nancy Hanks was called Nancy Sparrow at times.
THE LINCOLN KINSMAN Published Monthly by Lincolniana Publishers
Box
1110 Fort Wayne, Ind. October 1939 p.2
"Richard and Rachel Berry had eight children, John, Joahnna,
Sarah, Rachel, Richard Jr., Francis, Jane, and Edward. John died in
1795; Joanna, the oldest daughter, married James Brumfield and the
Brumfields' third child, William Brumfield, married Ann Lincoln, sister
of Thomas Lincoln, father of the President; of Sarah Berry we
have no record; Rachel married Thomas Pitman; Richard Jr., who married
Polly Ewing became the guardian of Nancy Hanks; Francis married
Elizabeth Brazelton; Jane married Daniel Mitchell; and Edward married
Polly Brazelton."

Nancy Hanks was raised by the Richard Berry's. Nancy Hanks was born in 1784.
In 1790 Lucy Hanks married Henry Sparrow, and had a number of children
by him, but Nancy continued to live with the Richard Berry's.

Events

Birth5 Feb 1784Hampshire County, Virginia
Marriage12 Jun 1806Hardin County, Kentucky - Thomas Lincoln
Death5 Oct 1818Gentryville, Indiana

Families

SpouseThomas Lincoln (1778 - 1851)
ChildSarah Lincoln (1807 - 1828)
ChildPresident Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)
ChildThomas Lincoln (1814 - 1814)