The year 1770 was a busy one for young Abraham Lincoln. It appears to have been the year he commenced his service in the Virginia militia, first as an "ensign" or "third officer". (today's second lieutenant), and later as a captain, a rank he attained not later than March, 1776. In July, 1770, Abraham made his first land purchase, 200 acres of "colony land" (public land) in the Linville Creek neighborhood, on the east side of the creek. The same month he began the accumulation of personal property with the purchase of two cows.
More important, 1770 was the year of the marriage of Abraham Lincoln and Bathsheba Herring, the only daughter of Alexander Herring of Bridgewater, near Harrisonburg, which was then in August County. His application for a marriage license was dated June 9. Both the cows and the land were purchased a few weeks after the marriage. Abraham was determined to show his bride that her husband was an enterprising young man.
Abraham's marriage license application does not include the name of his intended bride. The Augusta County records show that this was a common practice at the time., but for many years it has caused great confusion among Lincoln students concerning the identity of the paternal grandmother of President Lincoln.
It has been suggested that the unnamed bride of 1770 was the first of two wives, that Thomas Lincoln, father of the President, was a son by the first marriage, and that the Bathsheba who accompanied Captain Abraham Lincoln to Kentucky in 1782 was a stepmother of Thomas. His own mother, according to some supposition, was Anne Boone, or Mary Shipley, or Elizabeth Winter or Hannah Winters.
The Anne Boone error was a very natural one, for an Abraham Lincoln did marry an Anne Boone, a cousin of the famous Daniel. But the Abraham in this case was a half-brother of John Lincoln, not the son, and the marriage took place in July, 1760, ni Pennsylvania, not ten years later in Virginia. Since Anne Boone was a Quaker and her marriage took place "out of meeting", she was disciplined by her Quaker meeting. She acknowledged her error but nevertheless remained with her husband, by whom she had twelve children.
The Mary Shipley story appears to have originated with J.L. Nall of Carthage, Missouri, a grandson of Nancy Lincoln Brumfield, the youngest daughter of Captain Abraham. In a letter to Mrs. Caroline Hanks Hitchcock, February 11, 1895, Nall gave Mary Shipley as the name of his great-grandmother, the wife of Captain Abraham. To this statement Mrs. Hitchcock added details in 1899: "An Englishman named Robert Shipley of Lunenburg County [Virginia] and his wife, Sarah Rachel Shipley, had five daughters [including] Mary, who married Abraham Lincoln of Rockingham County, Va. The Lincoln genealogists Lea and Hutchinson, citing Nall, accept Mary Shipley as the first wife of Captain Abraham and the "mother of his elder children". The first wife died in Virginia "some time previous to 1779", according to these authors, who accept Bathsheba Herring as the second wife of Abraham. The Lincoln biographers Nicolay and Hay, citing Nall, also accept Mary Shipley as the wife of Abraham, whose marriage, they state, took place in North Carolina.
Anne (or Ann) Boone also comes into the picture as the mother-in-law of Abraham rather than his wife. According to J.A. Waddell's Annals of Augusta County, Abraham's wife was Elizabeth Winter, daughter of William and Anne Boone Winter". But Hannah Winters, not Elizabeth, was the name of Abraham's wife, according to Gideon Welles, Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy. Nicolay and Hay state that Welles was convinced that "the Abraham Lincoln that married Hannah Winters, a daughter of Ann Boone, sister of the famous Daniel, was the President's grand-father.
Out of this wilderness of genealogical confusion one recorded fact stands clear: With the removal of the family to Kentucky in prospect, on February 18, 1780, Abraham and Bathsheba Lincoln sold their Linville Creek farm of about 250 acres to Michael Shanks and John Reuf. The deed was signed by "Abrm Lincoln" and "Batsab Lincoln". In the deed and recording certificate (dated June 26), Mrs. Lincoln's first name is spelled "Bershaba", Bathsheba" and "Bersheba". Official records show, that Abraham Lincoln applied for a marriage license in 1770, and that ten years later the name of his wife was Bathsheba (or Bersheba or Bershaba). Was she the mother of all five of his children, or more particularly, was she the mother of the President's father Thomas (whose probable year of birth was 1778)?
Thanks to the careful investigations of Waldo Lincoln, William E. Barton, John W. Wayland and Louis A. Warren, it may be said with assurance that the bride of 1770 was Abraham's only wife and that her first name was Bathsheba. Very probably her family name was Herring. She was two years older than her husband and long-survived him, dying in Kentucky in 1836 at the age of ninety-four.
