The Parents of Great Men 



401 



This failure is not due to the lack of 

 diligence on the part of correspondents,^ 

 some of whom have devoted much time 

 to the study; but to the inadequate 

 genealogical material available about 

 great men. It is a noteworthy fact 

 that Mr. Redfield himself, who has 

 published hundreds of fragmentary pedi- 

 grees of great men, showing rapid or 

 slow breeding, has not in a single 

 instance, so far as the writer knows, 

 published a complete pedigree for three 

 generations, such as his offer required. 

 While none of the pedigrees was 

 technically acceptable, in competition 

 for Mr. Redfield's money, some of them 

 are of interest. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



The ancestry of Abraham Lincoln 

 was long shrouded in doubt, to such an 

 extent that his birth was widely alleged 

 to have been illegitimate. The sup- 

 posed inferior character of his forebears 

 has long been a stock case for citation by 

 those who "don't believe in heredity," 

 and who pointed to Lincoln as a great 

 man who had come from a most un- 

 promising stock, in defiance of all the 

 laws of inheritance of mental qualities. 

 Mr. Redfield, misled by inaccurate 

 accounts, has cited Lincoln as the 

 product of exceptionally slow breeding, 

 and would account for his preeminence 

 in this way. 



But recent researches^ have taken 

 all the mystery from Lincoln's parentage 

 and shown, as Ida M. Tarbell puts it. 

 that he "inherited from his ancestry 

 traits and qualities of mind which made 

 him a remarkable child and a young 

 man of unusual promise and power. 

 So far from his later career being unac- 

 counted for in his origin and early 



history, it is as fully accoimted for as 

 is the case of any man." The Lincoln 

 family was one of the best in the United 

 States, and its men had made a uni- 

 formly good record, in various parts of 

 the country, for nearly two himdred 

 years prior to his birth. His father, 

 Thomas Lincoln, while eccentric, was 

 a man of remarkable character in 

 many ways, by no means "poor white 

 trash" as popular tradition ' describes 

 him. The family of Nancy Hanks, 

 Abraham's mother, was likewise one 

 which showed a high level of mental and 

 moral qualities. Moreover, Thomas 

 Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were cousins. 

 Miss Tarbell is quite right in saying 

 that Lincoln's abilities were the natural 

 product of his ancestry. 



While the names of all his ancestors 

 on both sides, for four generations, are 

 known, many of the dates are uncertain 

 and it is impossible to say definitely to 

 what extent reproduction in this family 

 was earlier or later than usual. Thomas 

 Lincoln was thirty-one and Nancy 

 Hanks twenty-five, at the time Abraham 

 was born, both these ages being under 

 the average for old American families. 

 It is known that Samuel Lincoln, 

 Abraham's ancestor of the sixth remove, 

 was born in 1620; hence for this one 

 line of descent, the "tail-male,"* the 

 average of six generations is 3L5 

 years, well below the average of medi- 

 ocrity, whereas on Mr. Redfield's 

 hypothesis it might have been expected 

 to be above. The case of Lincoln, 

 while not complete enough to bear much 

 weight, is as far as it goes opposed to 

 Mr. Redfield's hypothesis. 



The exact determination of an aver- 

 age^ length of generation is naturall}'- 



- Thanks are due to the following, for their research: E. N. Bacon, Chelsea, Vt. ; Dr. Anna E. 

 Blount, Oak Park, 111.; Dr. J. G. B. Bulloch, Washington, D. C; J. Clarke, Leonia, N. J.; H. L. F. 

 Gillespie, Manchester, Iowa; Dr. Heinrich C. Keidel, Columbus, Ohio; Marshall Nevers, Brooklyn, 

 N. Y.; Dr. A. J. Rosanoff, Kings Park, L. I.; EHzabeth A. Sourdry, St. Louis, Mo.; W. I. Varner, 

 Athens, Ga. 



3 Tarbell, Ida M. The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln. New York, 1896. Hitchcock, 

 Caroline Hanks. Nancy Hanks. New York, 1899. 



* From the genealogies of New England families, Mr. Redfield calculates the average length 

 of one generation to be 33.83 years; of two generations, 65.26 years; of three generations, 96.5 

 years. The "tail-male" is the hne of straight descent from father to son: in human pedigrees it 

 is the line that bears the family name. 



5 An average is often merely a device for obscuring the truth, and in any serious study it is 

 necessary to know the deviations from the average as well. Sufficient attention has never been 

 given to the problem of determining the length of a human generation in various countries; it 

 might well occupy the time of some unemployed statistician. 



