Lincoln, John (Virginia John)

Born: 1716-05-03 Freehold, New Jersey

Died: 1788-11-XX Rockingham County, Virginia

John Lincoln was great grandfather of President Abraham Lincoln, grandfather of Thomas Lincoln, and father of Abraham Lincoln. Known as "Virginia John" to distinguish him from a cousin of the same name, John moved with his family from his native state to Pennsylvania around 1720, though he may later have returned to New Jersey, where his father had left him in his will three hundred acres in Middlesex County. In July 1743, He married Rebekah Flowers, with whom he had nine children, including Abraham in 1744. By 1746, John was back in Pennsylvania, having purchased land in Berks County. In 1748, he sold his holdings in Middlesex County, and over the next thirteen years, he bought additional land in Berks County. In 1765, John sold the last of his land in Pennsylvania and shortly thereafter moved to Virginia, in 1768 purchasing six hundred acres on the west side of Linville Creek, a few miles north of Harrisonburg in what became Rockingham County. He lived there for the remainder of his life. President Lincoln believed his great grandfather was a Quaker, but this conviction appears to be based only on family tradition, traced to the fact that John's family enjoyed close connections and intermarried with those espousing Quakerism.

Gravestone, Lincoln Family Cemetery, Linville, VA; Waldo Lincoln, History of the Lincoln Family: An Account of the Descendants of Samuel Lincoln of Hingham Massachusetts, 1637-1920 (Worcester, MA: Commonwealth, 1923), 92-101; John W. Wayland, The Lincolns in Virginia (Harrisonburg, VA: McClure, 1946), 24-41; Abraham Lincoln to Solomon Lincoln.