Was Abraham Lincoln Illegitimate?
By James Pylant
[See also Lincoln]
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States, born 12 February 1809,
Hardin County, Kentucky - died 15 April 1865, Washington, D. C.; son of Thomas
Lincoln and Nancy Hanks.
Nancy Hanks — the mother of Abraham Lincoln — continues to be a topic of debate when
it comes to her ancestry, especially her own parentage. Was she illegitimate? Hanks family
genealogists offer differing opinions on that subject.
Now comes a theory that Abraham Lincoln himself was illegitimate. R. Vincent Enloe’s
controversial claim is that Abraham Lincoln was the illegitimate offspring of Nancy Hanks
by an affair with a North Carolinian named Abraham Enloe. This theory is
discussed in detail in R. Vincent Enloe’s article,
"The Abraham Lincoln Genesis cover-up,"
on the website GenealogyToday.com. The writer says that Abraham Lincoln’s lanky build mirrored that of Wesley
Enloe, a man he believes was the President’s half-brother.
However, Dr. Harold Schwartz suspected that Abraham Lincoln’s height was inherited
from the Lincolns, as carriers of Marfan Syndrome, a disease not discovered until some 30
years following the president’s 1865 assasination. Lincoln had three strong characteristics
found in the syndrome — unusually elongated limbs,
a disproportionate body and problems with his eyesight. In fact, Lincoln’s left hand was
much longer than his right hand, even though his left thumb was nearly half an inch shorter
than his right thumb. Irregularities in his facial structure caused Lincoln difficulty with eye
coordination. Was the President’s skeletal structure inherited from the Lincoln family? Dr.
Schwartz believed it to be the case. Schwartz came to that conclusion in 1959, when he
learned that a seven year-old boy diagnosed with Marfan Syndrome had a Lincoln
bloodline. The boy’s maternal grandfather was a direct male descendant of Mordecai
Lincoln, II, who was the great-grandfather of Thomas Lincoln.*
*Rene Dubos and May Pines, Health and Disease (New York: Time-Life Books, 1965), pp. 123-124.
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