THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
45 
urn. 
Hope Farm Notes 
Lincoln a Yankee.—I find that many 
western people are following these notes 
carefully. Some of their criticisms are 
excellent, and will help the discussion. 
First as to the origin of great and use¬ 
ful things in the West. It has never de¬ 
veloped a greater character than Abraham 
Lincoln. I confess that a man from the 
neck of Cape Cod is somewhat shocked 
to receive the following: 
If the writer of “Out West” in your issue 
of December 29, will order from the pub¬ 
lishers of Unity, Lincoln Center, Chicago, 
Ill., its Lincoln birthday sermon, of a year 
or two ago, in which tlie editor traces' the 
ancestry of Lincoln—-and read it carefully 
—he will be convinced that he is in error 
in supposing that “Abraham Lincoln did not 
have a drop of Yankee blood in his veins.” 
llis ancestry is there traced back easterly; 
then northeasterly to this State, where some 
of them were decidedly notable and efficient 
in our colonial and warring days. There are 
Lincolns in this town now presumably ills 
relatives. p.' jj. 
New Salem, Mass. 
Another good friend in Illinois refers 
me to a little book entitled, “Nancy 
Hanks—The Story of Abraham Lincoln’s 
Mother.” I have read this with great in¬ 
terest. It shows that’ in 1699 Benjamin 
Hanks, an Englishman, landed at Ply¬ 
mouth, Mass. This man was the great 
grandfather of Lincoln’s mother. From 
that early day down to the present the 
Hanks family has occupied an honorable 
place in history, being particularly noted as 
a family of inventors. One of them made 
the old Liberty bell and another the great 
Columbian liberty bell! One of the sons 
of Benjamin Flanks (William) left Ply¬ 
mouth and set’tled in Virginia. William’s 
son Joseph settled in Amelia Co., Virginia, 
and here in 1784 Nancy Hanks was born. 
When she was five years old she went 
with her parents t’o the then wilderness 
of Kentucky, where she grew up. Thomas 
Lincoln, the father of our great President, 
was a cousin of Nancy Hanks, their 
mothers being sisters. The marriage of 
Nancy Hanks to Lincoln took place June 
14, 1806. 
What Is a Yankee? —This brings up 
the question of what I meant when I 
stated that’ Lincoln had “not a drop of 
Yankee blood in his veins.” A real Yan¬ 
kee, as I understand it, is one who lives 
east of the Hudson River. I have often 
said that Cape Cod is the best place in the 
world to go away from. If a Cape Cod 
man will only keep his mouth shut tight, 
t’he name of his former home will give 
him a reputation for wisdom and shrewd¬ 
ness far beyond his deserts. The west¬ 
ern people may say what they please about 
their wonderful country, but at heart they 
recognize the mental power and strong 
character of the “Yankees.” With these 
facts about Lincoln’s mother the Yankees 
have the right to put their peg up a few 
notches higher on history. I call myself 
an American, although my father was born 
on the ship which brought the family 
from the old country. .A man generally 
ranks with the section in which he makes 
his home, and in which his father lived. 
It is doubtful if the majority of us would 
care to know who our great grandfathers 
were. I confess that I have never tried 
t’o find out. It certainly shows the pre¬ 
dominating qualities of the Yankee blood 
that after two generations, Nancy Hanks 
still had the spirit and the power which 
goes with it—and "ave them to. her son. 
Perhaps we should not stop in Yankeeland, 
but go on to the hardy Englishman named 
Hanks, who fought under Alfred the 
Great when he beat back the Danes in 878! 
Nancy Flanks seems to have been one of 
those vital characters like the strong, vig¬ 
orous branch we have seen dominating an 
otherwise feeble tree. The first American 
ancestors of Lincoln’s father settled at 
Hingham, Mass., but Nancy Hanks seems 
to have been by far the stronger character 
of the two. Between slavery on one hand 
and the aristocracy of the slave owners on 
the other the New England yeoman could 
not maintain the character he held in Ins 
old home. In time he degenerated into 
“poor whites.” My friend in Illinois savs 
it is no disgrace to he horn in a log cabin, 
but a brand of uselessness and impotence 
to spend a life in one and bequeat’h it to 
a stolid posterity. I agree with that. 
Then he says: 
“Just imagine, if you can, a ‘Yankee’ 
leaving his children and grandchildren the 
same old log cabin. Imagine his chil¬ 
dren who are left illiterate!” 
We do not have to imagine this. I can 
take our friend to some of the hill towns 
in New England and show him little com¬ 
munities where the purest-bred “Yankees’’ 
have degenerated into much the Same 
condition as the southern "poor whites.” 
The great: majority in the township will 
be strong, clean, prosperous people, and 
yet there will be this little shanty town 
of feeble victims of hard cider and immo¬ 
rality, Why? I cannot say. It is some¬ 
thing to think about—this awful spectacle 
of human degeneracy which is thrust upon 
us everywhere. To me one of the great 
marvelous truths of history is the fact 
that Nancy Hanks caught up and carried 
on the great strength and beauty of char¬ 
acter which Abraham Lincoln needed for 
his work. It would seem as if great and 
noble traits leaped across two generations 
of unfavorable environment. If evil ones 
have the same power we may well be 
thoughtful over the future of our chil¬ 
dren. 
A Man’s Mother.— My Illinois friend 
goes on to say that Abraham Lincoln was 
“all Hanks” and "inherited all that was 
useful or characteristic from her.” I am 
of the opinion that much the same thing 
could be said of many young men to-day 
—whose fathers point to them with pride 
as “a chip of the old block.” Mother 
shaped the chip and gave it the character 
which makes it superior to other chips. 
Lincoln knew what he owed t’o his mother. 
Two portraits in this little book "Nancy 
Hanks” show in a striking manner how 
much Lincoln resembled the Hanks fam¬ 
ily. It is said that the first letter that Lin¬ 
coln ever wrote was, when a boy of 10, he 
asked Parson David Elkins to come and 
"preach a memorial service for my 
mother.” In after years he said: “All 
that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel 
mother. Blessings on her memory!” I 
will venture to say that you never knew 
a man who amounted to anything who had 
what we may call an inferior mother. By 
“inferior” 1 mean lacking in strong, moral 
character. Unless the child can obtain his 
early ideals from his mother, or in the 
event of her death or absence, from some 
woman that he loves, such ideals will 
never be humanU- true. It is not perhaps 
a high compliment to men to say that a 
pound of their precept or example is 
worth less for character building than an 
ounce of real mother love. We work for 
the home and are willing to fight for the 
country, and yet, after all, the future is 
really made by the hopeful women who, in 
home and in schoolroom, reach our chil¬ 
dren as we never can. I have stopped in 
my little notes on the West to try to bring 
these things out. I do not wish to brag 
about what New England people have 
done, but in a way the northeastern part 
of this country is the mother of the great 
West, giving to it the best and noblest 
that the old world could furnish. We 
shall see, I think, how this spirit has in¬ 
fluenced and is still influencing the West. 
If western men can show that they have 
improved both the spirit and the body 
we shall be glad of it. 
Home Notes. —The soft weather at New 
Year’s gave us a chance to do some plow¬ 
ing. I never plowed at this season before 
on our farm. The soil on t'he hill dries out 
quickly, and the frost had all disappeared. 
In a part of one young orchard the sod has 
gone to weeds. So we shall turn it over, 
grow a crop of early Canada corn and 
then seed to rye or wheat for next year’s 
fodder. This soft weather gives us a 
chance to get this work done. I would 
not plow wet soil at the bottom of the 
-farm at this season, as it would paste 
down too much. The hoys wanted to har¬ 
row after plowing, but I said “No!’’ Bet¬ 
ter to leave the furrows rough to be 
broken by frost later—if we have any. 
. . . We have had trouble with the 
pipes entering the kitchen stove from time 
to time. Not long ago the water-back in 
the stove began to leak, and on investiga¬ 
tion we found some of the pipes so coated 
with lime that water could hardly be 
forced through. When I put our water 
system in a plumber told me there was 
danger in using lime water. He advised 
me to have another tank for the hot water, 
using rain water from the roof. The man 
who did our work thought t’here was noth¬ 
ing in it, but now I see that my friend was 
right. ... I often say that every wo¬ 
man and girl at 1 lope Farm must be able 
to harness a horse if need he, and that 
every man and boy should he able to get 
up a meal. Tt is not always the most com¬ 
fortable thing t’o be taken at your word, 
but Mother did so when she left me home 
from church with the little girl to get 
dinner and take care of the baby. The 
dinner was readv and the baby was safe 
and clean when Bob and Nellie came trot¬ 
ting home, but I don’t know but’ T am 
more in favor of limiting the number of 
those who ought to get up a meal than T 
was. Our bread pudding was voted good, 
though we first forgot to put in the sugar 
and did not think of t'he eggs until the 
pudding was nearly done. We stirred 
them in and rebaked the pudding. I wish 
some forgotten things of life could be 
stirred in as effectively. • h. w. c. 
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ALL STEEL 
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