The will of Abraham Lincoln is dated in Springfield, Chester County, Pennsylvania, April 15, 1745, and was entered for probate on the 29th of the same month. His estate, a plantation in Springfield and two houses in Philadelphia, was divided among his children, viz.: Mordecai, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, John, Sarah, and Rebecca. Four of his sons bore the same Old Testament names as the four sons of the first Mordecai of Scituate.
Returning to Mordecai, we find in his will, proved June 7, 1736, that he is described as of Amity, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania. By it he bequeaths to “my sons Mordecai and Thomas all my lands in Amity,” etc.; to his daughters Hannah and Mary a piece of land in Machaponix, New Jersey; and to “my son John three hundred acres of land in the same town;” and to his daughters Ann and Sarah one hundred acres, also lying in Machaponix, New Jersey.
His oldest son, John, was by his first wife, Hannah Salter, and went with his father to Pennsylvania. A deed from John, on file in the Secretary of State’s office in Trenton, New Jersey, describes him as the “son and heir of Mordecai Lincoln, of the town of Carnaervon, County of Lancaster,” and the deed conveys to William Dye “three hundred acres in Middlesex County, New Jersey, part of the property conveyed October 20, 1720, by Richard Salter to Mordecai Lincoln, and by him bequeathed to his said son John.”
John Lincoln, in 1758, owned a farm in Union township, adjoining Exeter (Pennsylvania?), which he sold, and went to Virginia, settling in that portion of Augusta County which was organized into Rockingham County in 1779. His will cannot now be found, part of the papers in the probate office at Harrisonburgh having been destroyed by fire. But there is ample proof that he had sons—John, Thomas, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—and daughters.
The son Abraham married Mary Shepley in North Carolina, just over the Virginia boundary line, where their sons Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas were born. In 1782, or about that time, the family removed to Kentucky, where their daughters Mary and Nancy were born. The son THOMAS LINCOLN married Nancy Hanks, September 23, 1806, near Springfield, Kentucky, and ABRAHAM LINCOLN, their son, was born on the twelfth day of February, 1809.