Research Guide: Where to Check This Yourself

This archive would rather be checked than believed. Everything it says rests on material held in public collections, and almost all of it can be reached without leaving home. Below is where to go, in the order that is usually most productive.

Start with Lincoln's own words

The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress are digitised and free. The two short autobiographical sketches Lincoln wrote in 1859 and 1860 are the most economical way to understand the mainstream account, because they are his own statement of where and when he was born. Anyone assessing the North Carolina claim should read them first; they take about ten minutes and they frame everything else.

North Carolina county records

The State Archives of North Carolina holds the surviving county record series for Rutherford County and its neighbours — deeds, wills, estates, guardian and orphan papers, apprenticeship indentures, bastardy bonds, tax lists and court minutes. This is where the tradition's central claim would leave a trace if it left one anywhere, and it is the collection any serious researcher has to work through rather than around. Many series are available on microfilm and an increasing number are digitised.

Church records are a separate and often overlooked class. Baptist congregational minute books record admissions, dismissals and disciplinary proceedings, and they survive unevenly; where they survive they are held variously by congregations, by associational archives and by university denominational collections.

Newspapers

DigitalNC, a partnership between the state's cultural institutions and the university library system, hosts digitised North Carolina newspapers, yearbooks and local publications, and is the fastest route to twentieth-century county coverage of the claim. For the earlier national record, Chronicling America at the Library of Congress covers papers from across the country and is the place to trace when and where the Lincoln paternity rumour first reached print.

Books and out-of-copyright texts

Cathey's The Genesis of Lincoln (1899) and other pre-1929 titles in this literature are out of copyright and can generally be read through the HathiTrust Digital Library or the Internet Archive. Later titles are held across North Carolina's public and academic library systems and can usually be borrowed between libraries. The full list, with notes on what each is worth, is on the bibliography.

Federal and national collections

The National Archives holds federal census, land and military records that are essential for tracing the Enloe, Hanks and Lincoln families in the relevant decades. The Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park publishes the historical background to the Kentucky site itself. For general orientation on North Carolina people, places and topics, NCpedia, produced by the state's Government and Heritage Library, is a reliable first stop.

Local collections

County public libraries in this part of North Carolina typically maintain local-history and genealogy rooms holding vertical files, family papers, local publications and microfilm that appear in no online catalogue. Regional university special collections hold manuscript material relating to western North Carolina families. Material assembled by private collectors on the various Lincoln legends of the county has been deposited locally over the years, and enquiries about such holdings should be made to the holding institution directly.

How to approach an institution

Two courtesies save everyone time. Ask a specific question — a named family, a county, a range of years, a record series — rather than a broad one; staff can answer the first and cannot answer the second. And be clear that you are researching a tradition and its documentation, not seeking confirmation of it. Archivists deal with this claim regularly and will be considerably more helpful to someone who has already read the evidence than to someone arriving certain.

What this archive cannot do

Puzzle Creek Archive holds no collection, keeps no records and provides no research service, lookups or genealogical consultation. It is a reading resource compiled from public material. It is also, as stated throughout, entirely independent: it is not affiliated with and does not represent any museum, society, congregation, landowner or public body in Bostic or Rutherford County, and enquiries intended for any such organisation should be directed to that organisation through its own current channels rather than here.