Where was Abraham Lincoln born?

Answer 1

There is no truth to the story that Abraham Lincoln's mother was pregnant by another man story, which first self-published in 1899 in North Carolina by a man named James Cathey. The book, ‘Truth is Stranger than Fiction: or, The True Genesis of a Wonderful Man [Abraham Lincoln] has gone by variations of that title in some reprints over the decades, too. What is odd is that even as early as the 1890s, when the Lost Cause myth was still strong in the South, some people wanted to claim Lincoln as a native son of North Carolina, disparaging mainly his Virginia-born mother. Separately, the putative father, one Abraham Enloe, 14 years old when the future president was born in 1809, later stated clearly that he was not the father of Abraham Lincoln. Possibly all the nonsense arises from a N. Carolina soldier of the Confederacy, named Abraham Lincoln, who was we think something like a 3rd or 4th cousin to the 16th president; and got his name in the papers during the war as being strongly Confederate. I know nothing more on details of that soldier’s ancestry.Thomas and Nancy Lincoln were married in June 1806 in Kentucky – the deed exists – and their daughter Sarah was born about 11 months later. Many people in and around the towns of Washington, KY, and Hodgenville, KY, attested to the Lincoln family’s presence there. (An unrelated Thomas Lincoln lived eastwards, in Fayette Co., KY, in the 1810s-1820s, but our Thomas had removed to Indiana in fall 1816). See Wilson and Davis, eds., “Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln” (Univ. of Illinois Press, 1988), a massive, fine piece of detective and transcription work.
We understand that a newish museum about the old Enloe myth is now in Bostic, NC. We wish them well, but mainly we urge people everywhere to read Lincoln’s writings themselves – those are what is important for us all.
James M. Cornelius, Ph.D.
Curator, Lincoln Collection
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum

Answer 2

There is no truth to the story that Abraham Lincoln's mother was pregnant by another man story, which first self-published in 1899 in North Carolina by a man named James Cathey. The book, ‘Truth is Stranger than Fiction: or, The True Genesis of a Wonderful Man [Abraham Lincoln] has gone by variations of that title in some reprints over the decades, too. What is odd is that even as early as the 1890s, when the Lost Cause myth was still strong in the South, some people wanted to claim Lincoln as a native son of North Carolina, disparaging mainly his Virginia-born mother. Separately, the putative father, one Abraham Enloe, 14 years old when the future president was born in 1809, later stated clearly that he was not the father of Abraham Lincoln. Possibly all the nonsense arises from a N. Carolina soldier of the Confederacy, named Abraham Lincoln, who was we think something like a 3rd or 4th cousin to the 16th president; and got his name in the papers during the war as being strongly Confederate. I know nothing more on details of that soldier’s ancestry.Thomas and Nancy Lincoln were married in June 1806 in Kentucky – the deed exists – and their daughter Sarah was born about 11 months later. Many people in and around the towns of Washington, KY, and Hodgenville, KY, attested to the Lincoln family’s presence there. (An unrelated Thomas Lincoln lived eastwards, in Fayette Co., KY, in the 1810s-1820s, but our Thomas had removed to Indiana in fall 1816). See Wilson and Davis, eds., “Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln” (Univ. of Illinois Press, 1988), a massive, fine piece of detective and transcription work.
We understand that a newish museum about the old Enloe myth is now in Bostic, NC. We wish them well, but mainly we urge people everywhere to read Lincoln’s writings themselves – those are what is important for us all.
James M. Cornelius, Ph.D.
Curator, Lincoln Collection
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum