I have just discovered a link between Abraham Lincoln and myself. It’s tenuous, I’ll give you that, but a link it is, sent to me in black and white, nonetheless.
For the last several years I have been determined to ferret out what family history I can. It started after the death of my mother, reading through old letters and postcards trying to piece together from fragments of correspondence a whole missing line of my family.
Perhaps it’s an age thing. The older you get the more important the past seems to become. I have become intrigued to see patterns emerging – patterns in occupations, health conditions, looks and personal characteristics.
For instances – and stop me if I’m boring you – but I discovered that my great grandfather was a policeman and served in the RIC. On the other side of the world and almost a hundred years later, I found a second cousin of whom I had no previous knowledge who had just retired from Los Angeles police department.
Coincidence, probably. But surely if doctors, lawyers and politicians can run in families – why not policemen?
But I digress. Back to Abraham Lincoln and me. As I said I have been researching my mother’s side of my family, since naturally, it was mostly to that side that the correspondence referred. My mother’s father had married a Catholic woman, to the seeming horror of his two Presbyterian brothers. While one of them eventually was reconciled, the elder brother broke all ties and I never even knew he existed before I found the store of letters.
Genealogy is a huge area of interest for people all over the world. There are people poring over documents, scanning micro-fiches in dusty rooms, searching on-line, off-line and between the lines trying to connect with people living and dead.
And while there is nothing like turning the pages of an ancient ledger of birth records – there is also a lot to be said for the internet and the wondrous speed and accessibility it affords to the part-time researcher like myself.
It was a combination of searching the 1901 and 1911 Census of Ireland along with placing messages on genealogical sites that have lead Abraham and me to the same page. And it’s not that I have presidential ambitions and hopefully it’s not that I’m in line for assassination.
But it turns out that a very distant relation was a famous detective for the Pinkerton Detective Agency. According to my source he was also an undercover agent in discovering the so-called Baltimore Plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.
My son-in-law has already pointed out to me this evening the tangled nature of this link. This guy was my gran-uncle’s wife’s mother’s brother. Yes I can see that it’s a bit of a mouthful and hard to get your head around if you say it out loud. But written out like that … well, I can almost see me and Abe putting the finishing touches to his Gettysburg speech, or pondering the station of the nation over a couple of iced teas on his front porch!
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