Thomas Lincoln, SR

http://www.searchforancestors.com/bios/pennsylvania/history_of_faye...

Genealogical and Personal History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania, 1912

Lincoln Family Biography

Sarah Lincoln, wife of John Jones, was a descendant of Samuel Lincoln, who came from Norwich, England, to Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1637, at the age of eighteen years. He is entered on the ship's books as "servant," which probably meant apprentice, This Samuel Lincoln, "servant," by the irony of democracy, became the projenitor of Abraham Lincoln, president of the United States of America, "than whom there is no greater." Samuel married Martha Lewis, who died April 10, 1693. His fourth son, Mordecai, was the great-great-great-grandfather of President Lincoln.

(II) Mordecai, son of Samuel Lincoln, was born in Hingham, June 17, 1657, died in Scituate, Massachusetts, October 13, 1727. He was a blacksmith by trade, and established the first smelting furnace in New England. There is record of him as a foot soldier in 1679, and as a blacksmith at Hull in 1680. He married Sarah, daughter of Abraham and Sarah (Whitman) Jones (and here is where the name Abraham, so common in the Lincoln family, comes from). They had; Mordecai (2), Abraham, Isaac and Sarah, all born at Hingham, and Elizabeth and Jacob, born at Scituate, Massachusetts.

(III) Mordecai (2), son of Mordecai (1) Lincoln, settled first in Monmouth county, New Jersey, where he married Hannah Satter. He next appears in 1720 in Chester county, Pennsylvania, at Exeter. He then became a large land owner and interested in iron works. He married (second) Mary Rogers, who survived him. His will, made February 22, 1735, mentions three sons, Mordecai, John and Thomas, also provides for a possible posthumous child who at birth was named Abraham. This Mordecai (3) Lincoln is mentioned later.

John ("Virginia John") settled in Berks county, Pennsylvania, later in Virginia, His son, Abraham, carried on an extensive land transaction in Augusta county, Virginia, and later in Kentucky, where he was killed in the spring of 1784 by an Indian, while at work in his field. He married Mary Shipley, of North Carolina. Thomas, their third son (President Lincoln 's father), was with his father in the field at the time, and the Indian tried to capture him, but was killed by Mordecai, eldest brother of the boy, Thomas Lincoln married, and had an only son-Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator. {Editorial note: this lineage of President Lincoln is not correct.}

(IV) Mordecai (3), son of Mordecai (2) Lincoln, of Exeter, first appears on the tax lists of Berks county in 1754 as "single." March, 1773, conveyances show he had a wife Mary. The Lincolns were prominent in Berks county. Thomas, brother of Mordecai (3), was sheriff of the county, and all owned land. Mordecai was a merchant in Berks county and a man of means. In 1791 he visited his son Benjamin, who prior to 1791 had gone to Fayette county, Pennsylvania. He liked the country so well that on June 29, 1791, he purchased of Isaac Pearce the tract of land called "Discord," containing three hundred and twenty acres. He finally settled in the county himself, and continued his residence until his death in 1812. He had four children: Benjamin, a farmer of Dauphin, Fayette and Greene counties, Pennsylvania; John, went to Virginia; Ann, went to Virginia with John Lincoln; Sarah, of further mention.