Sale Agreement for Tom 1858
Architecture of the Rear Ell
When Colonel Abraham Lincoln moved into the Homestead in 1840 with his family, he began constructing the rear ell. An ell is an addition to a building that forms a right angle, creating the shape of an “L.” It is a two-story brick structure with two rooms on the first floor, three on the second, and an attic space. The walls are three courses thick, and the bricks are laid in common bond. There are two chimneys on the north side of the structure, one of which has a large cooking hearth on the first floor. It is likely that this addition was used as a summer kitchen by the Lincolns. When originally built, the summer kitchen was completely detached from the main home, only connected by a covered porch.
Adding a separate service building or wing to a house became very popular in Virginia in the nineteenth century, and “some rural plantations created covered walkways and passageways from the dining room to the external kitchen.”[1] It is possible that the other room in the summer kitchen was used as a laundry, as enslaved cooks on smaller plantations in Virginia often played multiple roles as laundresses or maids, in addition to being cooks.[2] While there is no archaeological or documentary evidence to show where on the property the Lincolns’ enslaved people lived and slept, it is very likely that some of them may have had quarters on the second floor or attic of the rear ell.
Enslaved cooks usually lived in the kitchen building, often in a loft or second story; if the cook had family on the plantation, they would often be allowed to live in the kitchen with him or her.[3] A multitude of duties could have been performed in this building which would have helped keep the Homestead running. The rear ell would also have allowed the Lincolns to keep a close eye on their enslaved people as they worked.
Since this space was where the primary food preparation was taking place for the Lincoln family, the cooking hearth would have had a fire going, regardless of season or temperature. Unlike in the main home, the rear ell did not have a central hall. Without one, there would have been a lot less opportunity for ventilation in this building; there were also significantly smaller windows in this area than in the main house. Not only would the enslaved people have had to work in very hot conditions during the summer, but they also would have had to live and sleep in the heat as well. Because the rear ell was part of the private area of the home, and an area where enslaved people would have worked, it would not have been a priority for the Lincolns to make sure there would be optimal airflow during the summer.
Since the rear ell was a decidedly private space on the Homestead, there was not a need to put so much emphasis into symmetry or decoration. Not only was it a private space, but it was also an area of the home where enslaved people would have worked. While the main house is perfectly symmetrical, the rear ell is completely asymmetrical. The building has two different sized chimneys that are both on the north side of the home, rather than one on each side. The windows are also unevenly spaced and are not all the same size. The brickwork was laid in common bond which was easier to lay and less fashionable than the Flemish bond used for the façade of the main home.[4] Because the ell was a space for only the inhabitants of the Homestead, the family seem to have put less emphasis on the architectural details when building it. Overall, the architectural differences between the rear ell and the main home clearly establish the rear ell as a private space on the homestead.
[1] Kelley Fanto Deetz, Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2017) 57.
[2] Deetz, Bound to the Fire, 12.
[3] Deetz, Bound to the Fire, 40.
[4] Only three of the original walls of the rear ell remain, but it is reasonable to presume that since three of them are in common bond, so was the fourth wall.
Architecture of the Main House
Despite the prominence of German architectural influences in the Valley, Jacob Lincoln chose to build a Federal-style home. Unfortunately, there are no documents left behind by the Lincoln family to explain why he made this choice, but it seems likely that he was influenced by the new popular style of architecture, even if the style was not as popular in the Valley. The Homestead is an “unusually sophisticated example of Federal style architecture” for Rockingham County. The house overall is constructed using locally made bricks which are laid in both Flemish and common bond. Flemish bond is a form of bricklaying where the bricks alternate orientation between the header (the short side) and the stretcher (the long side), creating a pattern. Common bond, rather, is laid with multiple rows of outward-facing stretchers interspersed with a row of headers.[1]
The façade and back of the original house follows a five-bay pattern with four windows and a door on the first floor and five windows on the second floor. The gable ends of the house, however, both have two large windows on each side of the chimney with two smaller windows providing light into the attic space. The original windows were small pane sash windows; on the first floor each sash had twelve small panes of glass while the second-floor windows had twelve panes in the top sash and nine in the bottom. [2]
The original portion of the house, built in 1800 by Jacob Lincoln, is the largest. It has a 3×3 floor plan featuring a central hall with a staircase to the second floor and attic. Upon entering through the front door, the room on the right-hand side spans the entire length of the house, with one fireplace and chimney centered on the outside wall. To the left, there are two smaller rooms which share a chimney, and each has corner fireplaces. The second floor follows almost exactly the same floorplan with one small addition: after venturing up the stairs, above the entryway on the first floor, there is a very small additional room. The attic, at the time the Lincolns lived there, was an open space with no fireplaces. Each room on the first two floors had hardwood flooring and wood paneling below the windows.[3]
There are several features in the home which, when analyzed, communicate a lot about the way the Lincolns, and Americans generally at the time, wanted to be seen by visitors to their home. One of these features is the central hall. Early American homes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries often had the main entryway to the house located in the main living space of the house. The introduction of a central hall into early nineteenth century homes altered this previous floorplan. Houses with central halls completely changed the way in which visitors experienced a home: rather than entering directly into the “hearthside glow” of a home, they were instead greeted in a “dark, unheated hallway.” By creating a space for greeting guests, families no longer allowed them direct access into their living space. In this way, homes such as the Lincoln Homestead, emphasized a new division between “inhabitants and visitors… [and between] internal and external.” The central hall is a physical embodiment of a new desire for privacy in a home’s architecture. Additionally, around the same time the central hall was added into homes, the master bedroom moved to the second floor. This further solidified the emphasis placed on privacy in nineteenth-century houses and the internal division of public versus private space in a home. [4]
The presence of the central hall in a home, particularly in Virginia, also altered the lived experience of the house. People in the past often altered the construction of their homes in order to fit the climate in which they lived. Virginians were the same. As early as 1705, people in Virginia started changing the forms of their houses to make Virginia summers more bearable. They began building larger rooms with high ceilings and adding sash windows with glass to increase airflow. The addition of a central hall in a floor plan increased the amount of airflow possible in a home. The hall would help pull outside air in through the front door, which could then be further circulated in the rooms through open windows or an open door at the back of the house as well. The Lincolns had a door at both ends of the hall, as well as at least three sashed windows in each room; sash windows could be opened from both the bottom and the top. By doing this, cool air was pulled into the room through the bottom window while hot air was circulated out the top. [5]
In addition to the central hall, the Lincolns had another strategy to help mitigate heat: the front porch. Porches were added to Virginia homes starting in the eighteenth century, likely influenced by earlier seventeenth century homes in England that had front porches. English porches were generally enclosed, but Virginia porches were altered to suit the summer heat and were left open. By the nineteenth century, however, the front porch became more of a living space for the family that was neither fully inside or outside and allowed homeowners to escape the heat indoors and look at the outside world. The absence of a front porch was often a sign of “low status” in Virginia. The Lincoln Homestead originally had a small open portico with a pediment, allowing the portico to frame the arched Federal-style doorway. The Lincolns might have sat on the portico in an attempt to cool off. [6]
Just as the layout of the home reveals important elements of the lives of its inhabitants, there is information that can be gleaned from the construction of the outside of the Lincoln Homestead as well. The earliest houses in the Shenandoah Valley were often made of stone and followed Germanic architectural styles. Crafting a house out of brick, though, required the extra step of firing the bricks that stone houses did not require. The decision to make a home out of bricks reflects a “fondness for technological complication” in early American homes. Kilns to fire clay into bricks were often built at the site of the new house. Once the bricks were created, there were any number of ways that the Lincolns could have directed them to be laid. They chose for the bricks meant for the façade of the house to be laid in Flemish bond, a fashionable pattern; the sides and back of the main home, as well as the rear ell, were laid in common bond. The Lincolns wanted the fashionable style of bricklaying for the front of the house and laying only the façade of the home in Flemish bond was likely less labor-intensive. Nevertheless, the Lincolns wanted to be viewed as fashionable and stylish by others. [7]
One important aspect of the façade, and the house in general, was its symmetry. Symmetry in architecture represents values such as harmony, order, and unity, while also projecting an image of the homeowners that “divulges no personal information.” The façade of one’s house can share a lot about the family living inside: “The house’s façade is also its people’s façade.” In this way, families hoped that having a symmetrical house with a symmetrical façade could suggest to outsiders that they were sophisticated and organized. When adding structures to houses before Georgian and Federal-style architecture became popular, homeowners would often construct additions on the sides of their houses, making the structure asymmetrical. When symmetry became important, however, families began putting additions onto the back of their homes. This allowed them to expand their houses without altering the symmetry of the house when looking at the building from the front. The Lincolns followed this model when Abraham and his family built the rear ell to the Homestead in the early 1840s: when the house is viewed from the front, it is impossible to tell the house is not symmetrical. [8]
Similar to the façade of a home, parlors in the 19th century related directly to the way in which a family hoped to be viewed by its visitors. Early parlors were multipurpose rooms; the family would have placed the its best furniture and possessions in the parlor but they also would have spent lots of time in this space. The parlor also served as the master bedroom of the house, with the best bedframe and mattress; because the heads of the family “had the most elevated status” in the home, they would sleep in the room which featured the highest status furnishings. Parlors were used for social activities, funerals, weddings, social organization meetings, and special occasions such as Sundays or holiday celebrations. [9]
This idea of the parlor as a multipurpose room with the family’s best furnishings evolved throughout the early 1800s until the parlor became dedicated to “the presentation of an elaborated public self” to anyone visiting the home. Parlors and parlor furnishings “were constant reminders of what Victorian culture valued highly: the principles of gentility and domesticity, along with the material refinement that inevitably accompanied civilized progress.” By the 1830s, Americans began to believe that a home and its furnishings had the ability to alter one’s character. Just as the architecture of a house can communicate family values, so does the interior. Not only can purchasing the elaborate furniture and textiles common in 19th-century parlors display values such as gentility and domesticity, owning these items also helps to cultivate these values in people. Even poorer Americans began to purchase goods in order to create some version of a parlor in their homes in order to portray themselves as respectable with the same values as middle-class Americans. [10]
While it is impossible to say for certain which room the Lincoln family used as their parlor, they certainly had a parlor for visiting guests. It seems most likely that the larger room on the right side of the hall was their parlor. Jacob Lincoln bought mahogany from New York or Pennsylvania and had several beautiful pieces of furniture created by a cabinetmaker named Schultz. These included a desk with a bookcase top, a corner cupboard, and a case for a grandfather clock. It is likely that the majority, if not all of these furnishings, would have been in the parlor so that visitors could admire them. The furniture was very finely crafted, and several pieces of the Lincoln furniture are in museum collections today. In addition to carving furniture, Wayland writes that Schultz also carved the elaborate mantel in the southwest room which is the large room on the right side of the hall. It is highly likely that the same person carved the wooden paneling throughout the first floor of the home as well. The paneling in the large room was painted a vibrant blue color around the trim. Since the southwest room seems to have been the most elaborate of the rooms on the main floor, it seems likely that it was the parlor in the Lincoln homestead. [11]
[1] Virginia Department of Historic Landmarks Commission Staff, “National Register of Historic Places – Nomination Form,” Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 1972, https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/VLR_to_transfer/PDFNoms/082-0014_Lincoln_Homestead_and_Cemetery_1972_Final_Nomination.pdf; “Technical Notes on Brick Construction,” The Brick Industry Association, March 1999, 1-2, https://www.gobrick.com/media/file/30-bonds-and-patterns-in-brickwork.pdf.
[2] “General Information – Historic Window Types,” The Wisconsin Historical Society Accessed November 1, 2023, https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS4301.
[3] Virginia Department of Historic Landmarks Commission Staff, “Nomination Form.”
[4] Henry Glassie, Folk Housing in Middle Virginia (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1975), 120-121.
[5] Glassie, Folk Housing in Middle Virginia, 136.
[6] Glassie, 137.
[7] Glassie, 133-134 and 166.
[8] Glassie, 166 and 168.
[9] Elizabeth Collins Cromley, “A History of American Beds and Bedrooms,” in Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture IV, ed. Thomas Carter and Bernard L. Herman (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991), 177; Catherine Greer, Culture and Comfort: Parlor Making and Middle Class Identity 1850-1930 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), 66 and 79-84.
[10] Greer, Culture and Comfort, vii, 6, 17, and 70. The Victorian Era is largely regarded as starting with the reign of Queen Victoria in 1837. Though the Lincolns had a parlor earlier than the 1830s (since the home was built in 1800), it would have evolved out of its earlier form as multipurpose room into a room that communicated the family’s values by the 1830s.
[11] John W. Wayland, The Lincolns in Virginia, 85; The grandfather clock is owned by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and is currently on display in their Keeping Time exhibit in their Dewitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum. “Tall case clock,” Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Accessed August 28, 2023, https://emuseum.history.org/objects/27636/tall-case-clock?ctx=ce09da270 92e40b08578eb668306591e2c736153&idx=20. The clock was sold at auction in 1974 and purchased by Colonial Williamsburg. In the publication for the 1974 Sotheby-Parke Auction, the clock was valued at $7,750. In all likelihood it is worth tens of thousands of dollars today. Anne Jackson, Art at Auction: The Year at Sotheby Parke Bernet 1974-75 Two Hundred and Forty-First Season (New York: The Viking Press, 1976), 335. In addition to the grandfather clock, the corner cupboard, though currently not on view, is in the collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. “Corner Cupboard (Primary Title),” Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Accessed August 28, 2023, https://vmfa.museum/piction/6027262-15592559/.
Enslavement at the Lincoln Homestead
The first Africans arrived in the colony of Virginia in 1619. Numbering about twenty, their legal status in the colony initially was ambiguous. However, by 1705, the colonial government created laws that established a race-based system of legal slavery which controlled the actions of enslaved people and passed enslavement onto the children of enslaved mothers. The population of enslaved Africans and African Americans grew rapidly; by 1790, they made up 39 percent of Virginia’s total population. Unfortunately, based on early scholarship of the Shenandoah Valley, there is a conception that enslaved African Americans did not make up any significant portion of the population of the Valley. Previous writers, such as Joseph Waddell and John Walter Wayland, incorrectly asserted that German and Scots-Irish people did not support enslavement, and since they had been the largest immigrant groups to settle in the Valley, there were limited numbers of enslaved people living in the Shenandoah Valley. This was categorically untrue; enslaved people made up approximately 25 percent of the Valley’s population by the start of the Civil War. Similarly, past scholarship also argued that enslaved people were well treated in the Valley and got along well with their slaveowners. [1]
More recent scholarship by authors such as Jonathan A. Noyalas and Edward Ayers has begun to delve into the complicated history of enslavement in the Shenandoah Valley and disprove these narratives. Because of biases in historic records, it can be hard to get a full picture of the experience of enslavement in the Valley. One of the only slave narratives from the Valley, The Narrative of Bethany Veney, A Slave Woman, is an invaluable source into what enslavement was like in Page County. Unfortunately, there are no written records from the enslaved people owned by the Lincoln family. However, stories of their lives can be pieced together using court records, letters, and economic records.
Henry
There are several appearances of a man named Henry in the Lincoln family records. Henry was one of Colonel Abraham Lincoln’s most valuable enslaved men. He appears on two undated lists of enslaved people; on one he is valued at $600 and the other at $625. There are no records which reveal when Abraham purchased Henry or his birthdate. However, it seems that Abraham allowed Henry some opportunities for self-sufficiency. In 1848, Abraham wrote a short note to an unidentified man asking that he send him a calfskin and leather for “black men’s shoes.” He also wrote that his “man Henry has some bark and sheep skins they belong to him and you will please pay him the money.” Furthermore, in a letter written by Abraham’s agent in Richmond, Jacob Shook in 1849, Jacob relays that the “wagons left, about 12’ oclock to day with the articles called for in [Abraham’s] letter. [He] sent the sales by Henry as well as the bills [he] purchased.” He goes on to mention that he “gave them no money, they having sold some flour on the road.” In addition to selling his own bark and sheepskins, it appears that Henry, and potentially other enslaved people, were producing and selling their own flour. Perhaps Jacob Shook assured Abraham that he had sent everything asked for and told him the time that the wagons left so that Abraham would know if anything went missing from the wagons. [2]
Henry was still enslaved by the Lincolns in 1851, when Abraham passed away. His will ordered that Henry and another enslaved man should be given to his wife Mary, with “their increase of the females, with permission.” Enslavement was a legal status in Virginia and after a law passed in 1662, any children born to an enslaved mother inherited her status as an enslaved person, a legal concept called partus sequitur ventrem. By giving Henry to Mary Lincoln, Abraham was giving her the wealth that would come from any children Henry would have. This demonstrates how the reproductive capabilities of enslaved people, particularly women, was used as a method to derive more wealth by slave owners. [3]
Squire
Squire was estimated to be around 50 years old in September 1841, which if accurate, would put his birthdate around the year 1791. Before coming to the Lincoln family, Squire was enslaved by Dorcas Robinson in Rockingham County. In her will dated 1811, Dorcas entrusted three enslaved people named Cate, James, and Squire to the children of her daughter Dorcas Lincoln, “in consideration of [the] natural love and affection” she had for her daughter. Squire remained enslaved by members of the Lincoln family from 1811-1841. In an undated list of the enslaved people owned by Col. Abraham Lincoln, Squire’s value is listed at $325.[4]
At some point after this list was written, Squire became the property of Abraham’s brother, Jacob Lincoln Jr. On August 19th, 1841, Squire was the subject of a court of oyer and terminer case involving arson. Oyer and terminer courts were a type of criminal court formed specifically to try slaves accused of capital crimes until 1785, when they began trying enslaved people for all felonies. Capital crimes were any crimes committed which could result in the death penalty; this included crimes such as murder, attempted murder, rape or attempted rape, arson, poisoning, conspiracy or insurrection, and theft. These trials took place at county courthouses and were presided over by five justices of the peace with no jury. If given a guilty verdict, there was no legal opportunity for an enslaved person to appeal the court’s decision themselves. Because Virginia law required an enslaved person convicted of a capital crime to receive the death penalty, judges and justices of the peace were required to impose that sentence. In some instances, however, enslaved people had their sentences commuted. [5]
The case of each enslaved person sentenced to death by a court in Virginia was sent to the governor for review. Virginia law allowed the governor to use the power of executive clemency to “sell and transport condemned bondsmen,” rather than hang them, if they felt the case warranted it. Notes from the justices of the peace, defense counsel, or petitions from local community members in favor of commuting the sentence could be included in the trial record for the governor to consider. Factors such as an enslaved person’s youth, personality, whether they had or had not committed crimes before, and the harshness of the death sentence in contrast to the crime committed – particularly if the crime involved property – were just a few of the reasons that justices cited when asking governors for clemency. [6]
Squire was accused of “feloniously burning a barn” owned by Abraham Lincoln that was valued at $1000. He was found guilty by the court of oyer and terminer in Rockingham County and sentenced to hang for his crime on October 29, 1841. Prosecutions for arson rose sharply in Virginia in the antebellum period, particularly after 1831 when charges of murder or conspiracy and insurrection began to decline. Arson was one of the “most feared” crimes by white slave owners. While the court records do not reveal a motive behind Squire’s actions, burning property was one of the most overt ways that enslaved people could rebel against their enslavement. When Squire’s case was sent to the governor’s office, the justices of the peace “recommended [Squire]….to the clemency of the executive,” though their reasons for doing so were not recorded. The lieutenant governor granted clemency to Squire and “ordered that he be brought to the penitentiary for transportation.” Instead of being hanged, Squire was sent to the Penitentiary of Virginia, located in Richmond, on September 10, 1841. Unfortunately, there are no further records of what happened to Squire. Since he was recommended for transportation, it is most likely that he was sold somewhere outside of Virginia. [7]
[1] Cynthia A. Kierner, “‘Skillfull in Anie Country Worke’: Red, White, and Black in Colonial Virginia,” in Changing History: Virginia Women Through Four Centuries (Richmond: The Library of Virginia, 2013); Kelley Fanto Deetz, Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2017); Jonathan A. Noyalas, Slavery and Freedom in the Shenandoah Valley During the Civil War Era (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2021).
[2] Undated list of enslaved people, Lincoln Society of Virginia; “Abram Lincoln Negroes,” Lincoln Society of Virginia, undated; Colonel Abraham Lincoln to Unknown, July 22, 1848, Lincoln Society of Virginia; Jacob Shook to Col. Abraham Lincoln, May 17, 1849, Lincoln Family Papers 1746 – 1939, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, MMC-0975, Accession no. 6065A.
[3] Abraham Lincoln, “Last Will of Abraham Lincoln,” May 14, 1851, Records of Rockingham County, Virginia, Circuit Court, Will Book A, 197; Brent Tarter, “Elizabeth Key (fl. 165-1660),” Encyclopedia Virginia, last updated November 8, 2022, Elizabeth Key (fl. 1655–1660) – Encyclopedia Virginia.
[4] Dorcas Robinson, “Dorcas Robinson Will,” April 7, 1811, In Waldo Lincoln’s History of the Lincoln Family, 205-206, https://archive.org/details/historyoflincoln00illinc/page/205/ mode/1up; “Abram Lincoln Negroes,” Lincoln Society of Virginia, undated.
[5] Philip J. Schwarz, Slave Laws in Virginia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996) 72 and 68; Daniel J. Flanigan, “Criminal Procedure in Slave Trials in the Antebellum South,” The Journal of Southern History 40, no. 4 (Nov 1974): 544, https://doi.org/10.2307/2206354.
[6] Flanigan, “Criminal Procedure in Slave Trials,” 544; Schwarz, Slave Laws in Virginia, 75-76.
[7] Jacob Lincoln, “Public Claim October 10, 1841,” Condemned slaves and free blacks executed or transported records, 1781-1865, Accession APA 756, Box 7, Folder 16 Library of Virginia, 2, http://rosetta.virginiamemory.com:1801/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE1181034; Schwarz, Slave Laws in Virginia, 7 and 88; Noyalas, Slavery and Freedom in the Shenandoah Valley, 21; A List of Slaves and Free Persons of Color Received in the Penitentiary of Virginia for Sale and Transportation from the 25th June 1816 to the 4th February 1842, 10, https://lva.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01LVA_INST/br4o1h/alma9917846592105756.
Col. Abraham Lincoln (1799-1851)
Colonel Abraham Lincoln, son of Captain Jacob and Dorcas Lincoln, was born on March 15, 1799. In the first few years of his life, his parents built and moved into the Lincoln Homestead. Abraham was the last boy born to Jacob and Dorcas and he lived with them until after his father passed away in 1822. Abraham married Mary Homan on October 26, 1826, when he was 27 years old. Together they had four daughters from 1827-1837, and one who passed away as an infant. Abraham and Mary first lived together in a “substantial log structure” situated on land he had inherited from his farther near where Virginia John’s house burned down in 1791. In 1837, Abraham purchased the shares of the Lincoln Homestead owned by his sisters Elizabeth Chrisman and Abigail Coffman. Though a record of it has not survived, Abraham’s will also recorded that he purchased his sister Dorcas Strayer’s share from her husband John. [1]
In 1840, when Dorcas Lincoln passed away, Abraham and Mary moved into the Lincoln Homestead and began construction on the rear ell addition. Completed in 1841 or 1842, this structure was likely one of the areas on the property where enslaved people lived and worked; though there are no records which detail exactly which kinds of labor the Lincolns’ enslaved people did at the Homestead, it is highly probable that enslaved labor could have helped build the structure, since Abraham owned 16 enslaved people in 1840. [2]
Abraham ran a substantial farm on the Lincoln Homestead. In 1850, one year before his death, the cash value of the Lincoln Homestead was over $26,000. The Lincolns were growing wheat, corn, hay, rye, oats, potatoes, and barley. Additionally, they had significant amounts of livestock, including 70 cattle, 13 horses, 40 swine and 100 sheep. As did many other farmers in the Valley, Abraham sold his livestock and other products from the farm to various markets in Virginia, particularly Richmond. Abraham seems to have worked primarily with two men named Jacob and John Shook, regularly corresponding with them in the 1840s. In a letter sent from Richmond on August 24, 1849, Jacob Shook advised Abraham that “our beef market has been thinly supplied” and that “there have been no hogs in yet… [but he thought] those that come in tolerably early will get the best price.” Abraham also wrote to Samuel Hartley in Winchester to inquire about the price that flour would get in the market there: “Mr. A Lincoln….I have sent you the price [of flour] in July + Sept 1837.” Abraham also used products from the Homestead as payment for goods. In May 1850, Robert B. Winslow wrote to Abraham to inform him that the machine he had ordered would be ready for him on June 1st and “if [Abraham had] Bacon for sale, [he] may send about 200 lbs, hog round.” Under Abraham, the Lincoln Homestead continued to be a prolific farm. [3]
Kate Pennybacker, Abraham Lincoln’s granddaughter, described him as a “good businessman, of a jovial disposition, humorous and witty. He had a gift for dealing with people.” She also described Abraham as very afraid of fire; he had his fear of fire realized when his barn was burned down by an enslaved man named Squire. Abraham served as a Colonel in the 145th Virginia militia in Rockingham County from 1840 – 1850. In 1851, Abraham passed away at the age of 52. In his will, he divided his property between his wife Mary and his four daughters. Mary was given the Lincoln Homestead and the 200 acres originally belonging to Jacob Lincoln, as well as “the whole of [the] household and Kitchen furniture…. horses, four cows, and twenty hogs also one of my wagons.” Additionally, Abraham wished her to have his “slaves Kate and Jerry, Rachel, and her four children, Ben, George, Lucinda, and Isaac and [his] two men, [name burnt] and Henry.” The remainder of his enslaved people were “equally divided between [his daughters] according to the value of said Slaves.” His three unmarried daughters – Caroline, Josephine, and Dorcas Sarah – were each given an equal share of the rest of his land, while his married daughter Mary Elizabeth Maupin was given the land and the interest on the land where she was already living with her husband Dr. Richard S Maupin. Because Abraham did not have sons to pass his wealth on to, his daughters were able to inherit a significant amount of wealth and property, much of which passed through three generations of the Lincoln family. [4]
[1] John Wayland, The Lincolns in Virginia (Staunton: The McClure Company, Inc., 1946), 181; Joseph Chrisman and Joseph and Abigail Coffman, “Indenture between Joseph Chrisman and Joseph Coffman and Abigail his wife,” September 4, 1837, Lincoln Family Papers 1746 – 1939, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, MMC-0975, Accession no. 6065A; Abraham Lincoln, “Last Will of Abraham Lincoln,” May 14, 1851, Records of Rockingham County, Virginia, Circuit Court, Will Book A, 197. In his will, Jacob Lincoln gave the Homestead and the 200 acres it was on to Dorcas for the rest of her life and then wanted it to be sold and the profits divided between his daughters Elizabeth, Abigail, and Dorcas. The indenture was made by Elizabeth’s husband Joseph Chrisman because Elizabeth passed away in 1824, two years after Jacob died.
[2] United States Census Bureau. “United States Census, 1840, Virginia, United States.” Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1840.
[3] United States Census Bureau, “United States Census Non-Population Schedules – Agriculture, 1850, Virginia,” Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1850; Wayland, The Lincolns in Virginia, 185; Jacob Shook to Col. Abraham Lincoln, August 24, 1849, Lincoln Family Scrapbook, Lincoln Family Papers 1746 – 1939, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, MMC-0975; Samuel Hartley to Mr. A Lincoln, February 12, 1837, Lincoln Family Scrapbook, Lincoln Family Papers 1764 – 1939, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, MMC-0975; Robert B. Winslow to Abraham Linkin Esq., May 27, 1850, Lincoln Family Scrapbook, Lincoln Family Papers 1764 – 1939, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, MMC-0975.
[4] Wayland, The Lincolns in Virginia, 188; Abraham Lincoln, “Last Will of Abraham Lincoln,” May 14, 1851, Records of Rockingham County, Virginia, Circuit Court, Will Book A, 197.
Tour the Lincoln Family Cemetery
This is a 360 degree walkthrough of the Lincoln Family Cemetery located on the Lincoln Homestead in Linville, Rockingham County, Virginia. It was created by Sydney Ring as part of a JMU Masters’ Thesis using technology available through the History Studio at JMU. This cemetery was restored in 2015 by the Massanutton chapter of the DAR. Unfortunately, since then, the gravestones have become very difficult to read. In some cases, there are better images available of individual gravestones on FindAGrave.com.
The following infographic shares the biographical information written on each stone, as well as it’s approximate shape.
Timeline of Lincoln Homestead
This timeline was created in partnership with Dr. Andrew Witmer’s undergraduate students from James Madison University. It outlines the changing ownership of the Lincoln Homestead from its construction in 1800 until today.
Jacob Lincoln (1751-1822)
Jacob Lincoln was the fifth child of “Virginia” John and the only one of his sons who remained in Virginia. Jacob, born in 1751 in Pennsylvania, moved with his family to Virginia at the age of 17. He was heavily involved in the local community throughout his life and participated in events of national importance as well. Jacob’s signature appears with a few others from Rockingham County on a petition submitted to the Virginia House of Delegates on October 16, 1776. With over 10,000 signatures, the petition asked that the Church of England be removed as the sanctioned church of Virginia and that the burden of paying tithes to the church be ended. The petitioners requested that now that they had been “delivered from British Oppression…. every religious Denomination [be] on a level” while the legislature would only interfere in religious practices in order to “support them in their just Rights and equal Priveliges.” [1]
On August 29th, 1780, Jacob married Dorcas, daughter of David and Dorcas Robinson. Dorcas Lincoln was 17 and Jacob was 28 when they were married. They went on to have 11 children – four boys and seven girls – from 1781-1803. Colonel Abraham, a subsequent inhabitant of the Lincoln Homestead, was their ninth child. Shortly after Jacob and Dorcas were married, Jacob went to serve in the American Revolution and rose through the ranks to become a Lieutenant. He served first for three months in Western Virginia in McIntosh’s regiment and then served four months in 1781 in Captain Richard Ragan’s regiment, which was present at Yorktown when General Cornwallis surrendered. [2]
Following his Revolutionary War service, Jacob returned to Rockingham County, where he lived out the rest of his life. In 1778, Jacob had purchased around 200 acres of land adjoining his father’s property in Linville from Tunis Vanpelt. This is the land on which Jacob built the Lincoln Homestead in 1800 and that his family lived on for almost 100 years. In 1791, Virginia John’s home burned down, and Jacob’s brother Thomas sold the remainder of their father’s property to Jacob. This was incorporated into the rest of Jacob’s land holdings. [3]
Jacob was appointed to various positions in Rockingham County, including as the overseer for a road in the county and as a Captain of the militia. Furthermore, he served as an Overseer of the Poor for the county from September 26, 1803, until November 4, 1805. The General Assembly of Virginia shifted the duty of caring for poor people from churches, to an elected body. Initially created in 1780, the Overseers of the Poor was a body of appointed officials from the county who were required to help care for the poor of the county; they would meet periodically to discuss how the poorhouse would be run, what kinds of taxes they would need to raise in order to support people, and to decide on the members who would be in the group. The Overseers of the Poor was an early precursor to more modern social welfare programs and it was an important community body. People could apply for aid from the Overseers or someone in the community could recommend a struggling person to the Overseers. They could give out a variety of kinds of aid, ranging from single disbursements of material goods, monetary aid, or continued support for several years.[4]
In addition to his roles within the community, Jacob amassed a significant amount of wealth throughout his lifetime. A large portion of that wealth derived from the purchase of enslaved African Americans. The first enslaved person owned by the Lincolns appears in the historic record in the will of David Robinson, Jacob’s father-in-law. Written in 1785, Robinson willed his “youngest daughter Dorcas Lincoln one negroe girl named Caty, now in the possession of her husband Jacob Lincoln to her and her heirs forever.” Caty, or Cate, appears again in the 1791 Personal Property Tax Book alongside three others: Philis, Tom, and Spencer. Philis and Tom were over sixteen years old, while Cate and Spencer were between the ages of twelve and sixteen. Since David Robinson mentions that Cate was already with Jacob and Dorcas, but she does not appear in their tax records until 1791, it is likely that she was younger than 12, and therefore was not taxable property yet. Only enslaved people between the ages of twelve and sixteen, or those who were over sixteen, were taxed in Rockingham County. The tax records reveal that the number of people owned by the Lincolns fluctuated until Jacob’s death in 1822. The 1820 Federal Census, however, was taken two years before Jacob’s death and records sixteen enslaved people of various ages living in the Lincoln home, including seven children under fourteen years of age.[5]
Though a probate inventory of his estate has not survived, his will helps give his economic standing by the time he passed away in 1822. Jacob left the Lincoln Homestead and at least 200 acres of land to his widow, Dorcas, as well as all the household and kitchen furniture she did not want to sell, one mare, three cows “of her choice,” and his “Yellow Girl Jane & her two children During her widowhood one Negroe Man named Jerry, son of Kate.” Each of his sons was awarded a sizable tract of land while his daughters received sums of money anywhere from $500 to £1000. His daughter Abigail’s sum of £1000 appointed to her had £200 taken out of it because she had previously been given ownership of “a negroe Boy Call’d Sam & a negroe Girl named Emily.” Once his daughter Elizabeth received ownership of “a Negroe Girl named Ann,” he ordered that the remaining enslaved people and all the rest of his belongings should be sold at public auction. Unfortunately, the enslaved who were to be sold at auction were not listed by name. Despite being a young man in the Revolutionary era, petitioning the Virginia House of Delegates for religious freedoms, and fighting several months to gain freedom from Great Britain, Jacob made the choice to own a substantial number of enslaved people. [6]
[1] John Wayland, The Lincolns in Virginia (Staunton: The McClure Company, Inc., 1946), 25 and 82; Mari Julienne, “‘That the Oppressed May Go Free’: A Petition to the Virginia General Assembly for Religious Freedom,” The Uncommonwealth: Voices from the Library of Virginia, September 21, 2022, https://uncommonwealth.virginiamemory.com/blog/2022/ 09/21/that-the-oppressed-may-go-free-a-petition-to-the-virginia-general-assembly-for-religiousfreedom/#:~:text=One%20such%20petition%20from%20%E2%80%9CDissenters,in%20the%20practice%20of%20religion; “Dissenters: Petition,” Series IV: Miscellaneous – Legislative Petitions of the General Assembly 1776-1865, Library of Virginia, October 16, 1776, http://rosetta.virginiamemory.com:1801/delivery/Delive ryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE3435021.
[2] Wayland, The Lincolns in Virginia, 25 and 76; “Jacob Lincoln,” US Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, 1800-1900, Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration Record Group 15, HeritageQuest, 514-515, https://www.ancestryheritagequest.com/discoveryui-content/view/73507:1995_phsrc=abD1875&_phstart=successSource&gsfn=Jacob&gsln=Lincoln&ml_rpos=1&queryId=46b2d1051fc0cef84185cd9249164587.
[3] Wayland, The Lincolns in Virginia, 33 and 73. Jacob purchased the land in 1778. The land passed out of the Lincoln family 96 years later when Jacob’s daughter-in-law, Mary Homan Lincoln, passed away. Per Virginia John’s will, transcribed on pages 35-36 in The Lincolns in Virginia, his house and property was to be given to his widow, Rebekah so that she might live there and receive the profits from working the land. Their son Thomas was to be given the option to rent the property during her lifetime, and after her death would receive the entire plantation. However, when the house burned down in 1791, Thomas sold the land to his brother Jacob, with the permission of his mother, and moved to Kentucky.
[4] Overseers of the Poor Minute Book I 1787-1861 Transcript, Rockingham County Circuit Court, Histories Along the Blue Ridge, 45-55, https://omeka.lib.jmu.edu/erp/files/ show/4250; Robert M. Usry, “The Overseers of the Poor in Accomac, Pittsylvania, and Rockingham Counties, 1787-1802,” Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects, William & Mary, 1960, iv and 18.
[5] David Robinson, “Copy of Last Will of David Robinson,” April 12, 1785, Lincoln Family Papers 1746 – 1939, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, MMC-0975, Accession no. 6065A; Records of Rockingham County, Virginia, Circuit Court, “Jacob Lincoln,” Personal Property Tax Vouchers, 1791; United States Census Bureau. “United States Census, 1820, Virginia, United States.” Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1820.
[6] Jacob Lincoln, “Copy of Last Will of Jacob Lincoln,” February 7, 1822, Lincoln Family Papers 1746 – 1939, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, MMC-0975, Accession no. 6065A.