Excerpt from Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 1 of 2 His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abra ham, and the like. This effort to connect the president with the Lincolns of Massachusetts was afterward carried forward by others, who felt an interest greater than his own in establishing the fact. Yet if he had expected the quest to result satisfactorily, he would probably have been less indifferent about it; for it is obvious that, in common with all Ameri cans of the old native stock, he had a strenuous desire to come of respectable people; and his very reluctance to have his apparently low extrac tion investigated is evidence that he would have been glad to learn that he belonged to an ancient and historical family of the old Puritan Common wealth, Settlers not far from Plymouth Rock, and immigrants not long after the arrival of the May flower. This descent has at last been traced by the patient genealogist. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.