Lincoln Ancestry Challenged

by Jamie Duffy

NEW PROVIDENCE - Abraham Lincoln, savior of the Union and emancipator of American slaves, was born the illegitimate son of Nancy Hanks and businessman Abraham Enloe in western North Carolina. In order to get Nancy and her infant son away from the Enloe household, Mr. Enloe sent mother and son to Kentucky and arranged a marriage with Thomas Lincoln, a drunkard who beat his wife and "adopted" son and gave them a ramshackle hut with barely a floor to sleep on. He was paid in mules and cash.

Abraham Lincoln was probably about six years older than his faked birth date of Feb. 12, 1809, and no more resembled Thomas Lincoln than his true half-brother, Wesley Enloe, who shares the same ultra-lanky frame inherited from their father (see a photo comparison).

These facts are just part of the covered-up truths of Abraham Lincoln's genesis, kept quiet by the president's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, and cooperative biographers who wanted for various reasons to present the "Kentucky Sunday School" versions of Mr. Lincoln's life, according to New Providence resident Robert Vincent Enlow.

His sources include writers from a century ago who he says interviewed locals from Rutherford County in North Carolina where Lincoln was really born. Those sources swore they not only saw Nancy Hanks' baby, Abe, but also held him in their arms.

For Lincoln history buffs, two of the sources he uses are James H. Cathey, a North Carolinian state legislator who wrote "The Genesis of Lincoln" in 1899, and Dr. James Coggins, president of Atlantic Christian College, who published a work, "Abraham Lincoln, North Carolinian With Proof" in 1927. Mr. Enlow also insists that Lincoln's partner in law, William H. Herndon, was determined to find the truth and traveled many miles throughout Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois to interview those connected with the Lincolns. He should have gone to North Carolina, said Mr. Enlow.

Why, if it is true, has it not been accepted?

Mr. Enlow points to Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, as the leader of "the great cover-up."

"The political ambitions of Lincoln's son Robert, Secretary of War and mentioned for the presidency, figured in the surveillance and censorship of material for publication. Educated at Harvard, mover in high social circles, he did not want his father's humble beginnings aired in public. Those who would not tinker with or falsify history paid for it with near literary oblivion. They were not welcome at the same table with the 'kid-glove' biographers, many of whom had already cased in and who had plans for further exploitation of this great man. The small segment of the public to whom the genesis truth was known raised little fuss about the cover-up, probably knowing they were vastly out-numbered, and the rest could be expected to be resentful of anything disturbing an image they were comfortable with," Mr. Enlow wrote.