A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln

John George Nicolay (February 26, 1832 - September 26, 1901) was a German-born American author and diplomat who served as private secretary to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and later co-authored Abraham Lincoln: A History, a biography of the 16th president. He was a member of the German branch of the Nicolay family. John G. Nicolay was Abraham Lincoln's private White House secretary. With assistant secretary, John Hay, he wrote the two volume definitive biography of Lincoln,...
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John George Nicolay (February 26, 1832 - September 26, 1901) was a German-born American author and diplomat who served as private secretary to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and later co-authored Abraham Lincoln: A History, a biography of the 16th president. He was a member of the German branch of the Nicolay family. John G. Nicolay was Abraham Lincoln's private White House secretary. With assistant secretary, John Hay, he wrote the two volume definitive biography of Lincoln, "Abraham Lincoln, a Biography." Although this is a condensation by Nicolay of that biography, it is still a sizable work and a fairly thorough treatment of the life of the 16th president of the United States.

Excerpt

Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States, was born in a log cabin in the backwoods of Kentucky on the 12th day of February 1809. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was sixth in direct line of descent from Samuel Lincoln, who emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1638. Following the prevailing drift of American settlement, these descendants had, during a century and a half, successively moved from Massachusetts to New Jersey, from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, from Pennsylvania to Virginia, and from Virginia to Kentucky; while collateral branches of the family eventually made homes in other parts of the West. In Pennsylvania and Virginia some of them had acquired considerable property and local prominence.

In the year 1780, Abraham Lincoln, the President's grandfather, was able to pay into the public treasury of Virginia "one hundred and sixty pounds, current money," for which he received a warrant, directed to the "Principal Surveyor of any County within the commonwealth of Virginia," to lay off in one or more surveys for Abraham Linkhorn, his heirs or assigns, the quantity of four hundred acres of land. The error in spelling the name was a blunder of the clerk who made out the warrant.