Ancestors

Edward Lincoln

Edward Lincoln lived at Hingham in Norfolk. The parish register there survives from 1600. In it he baptized six children over twenty five years: Richard on 20 September 1600, Sarah on 13 April 1606, Robert on 19 November 1615, Daniel on 28 March 1619, Samuel on 24 August 1622 and Amye on 11 December 1625. Amye lived six months. She was buried on 17 June 1626.

He was one of many Lincolns in that register. In the same years Richard, Robert and Hugh Lincoln were baptizing and burying children at Hingham. A Richard Lincoln "of Norwoode" baptized a daughter in 1622. In 1625 alone the clerk buried Elizabeth, the wife of Richard Lincoln the butcher, two Lincoln widows, and Hugh Lincoln and his wife Amy, twelve days apart.

The register buries him on 11 February 1639/40 as "Edward Lincoln, the elder." The words "the elder" mean a younger Edward Lincoln was living in the parish at the time.

In 1909 J. Henry Lea and J. R. Hutchinson published The Ancestry of Abraham Lincoln. They took his son Samuel, baptized in 1622, to be the Samuel Lincoln who sailed for New England in 1637 and settled at Hingham in Massachusetts. That Samuel was the immigrant ancestor of President Abraham Lincoln. Their case rests on the brothers. Three Lincoln brothers, Thomas, Daniel and Samuel, are proved at Hingham in Massachusetts by a will and a deed. Edward had sons named Daniel and Samuel. Lea and Hutchinson add a son Thomas, born before the register begins in 1600. A Thomas Lincoln, weaver, came to the new Hingham in 1633 with Nicholas Jacob, Jacob's wife and two children. Daniel Cushing wrote him down as "their cosen." From that word Lea and Hutchinson suggest that Edward's wife was a Jacob. Her name is not known.

Edward's own parents are known from a suit in Chancery. Chancery was the court in London that heard disputes over wills, trusts and land settlements. In 1621 Anne and Elizabeth Lincoln, young daughters of Richard Lincoln's last marriage, sued Edward for six acres at Swanton Morley and Great Witchingham. Their bill was sworn on 11 May 1621. It accused him of having "suppressed and deteyned the said will" of their father. Edward answered on 2 June. He said that in 1574 his father Richard had settled the Hingham freehold on himself and his bride, Elizabeth Remching, and on the heirs of their two bodies. Elizabeth was a daughter of Richard Remching, lord of the manor of Carbrooke. Edward said he was the only surviving child of that marriage. Lea and Hutchinson called the suit one of those rare "finds" which "persistently haunt the genealogist's dreams, but seldom bless his waking hours." Taken with Samuel's baptism, they wrote, it gives "a skeleton pedigree of four generations": Robert Lincoln, his eldest son and heir Richard, Richard's eldest son and heir Edward, and Samuel. Their chart begins with a Robert Lincoln of Hingham who died in 1543, and runs through his eldest son Robert, who died in 1556, to Richard of Hingham and Swanton Morley, who died in 1620.

Waldo Lincoln, writing the family genealogy in 1923, would not accept the identification. He wrote that it "does not seem to be founded on sufficiently strong evidence to make it sure. It is in fact contradicted by the age given to Samuel on his emigration in 1637, and by the age assigned to him on his death, both of which make him born in 1619, three years before his baptism." Edward's son Daniel was baptized in 1619 itself. And a second Daniel Lincoln lived at Hingham in Massachusetts, dying there on 19 March 1698/9 in his eightieth year. Waldo Lincoln thought him "quite as likely to have been the son of Edward Lincoln of old Hingham as the other." His conclusion was plain: "Until other confirmatory evidence is found, therefore, one cannot accept as proved beyond reasonable doubt the claim that Samuel was the son of Edward Lincoln of old Hingham, and that he was baptized Aug. 24, 1622." Lea and Hutchinson answered that Daniel was the elder brother and that the recorded ages must be wrong. The question is still open, and Edward's place as Samuel's father rests on the book of 1909.

If Edward Lincoln is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Edward Lincoln (d. 1639)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/edward-lincoln-1639-fd7021.