Nancy Hanks Lincoln (1784-1818) was the mother of our 16^th president, Abraham Lincoln. She was born in Virginia (the area where she was born is now in West Virginia), was raised by her grandparents, and moved with them to Kentucky about a month after she was born.  She met Thomas Lincoln through mutual friends and in 1806 they married. They had 3 children: Sarah (1807-1828), Abraham (1809-1865), and Thomas (died in infancy in 1812). In 1816 the family moved to Spencer County, Indiana and settled along Little Pigeon Creek.

On October 5, 1818, some 2 years after moving to Indiana, Nancy Hanks Lincoln died at the age of 34 (the gravestone says 35, but she was only 34).  Quoting Carl Sandburg in Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years, “Tom Lincoln took a log left over from the building of the cabin, and he and Dennis Hanks whipsawed it into planks, planed the planks smooth, and made of them a measure for a box to bury the dead wife and mother in. Little Abe, with a jackknife, whittled pine wood pegs. And while Dennis and Abe held the planks, Tom bored holes and stuck the whittled pegs through the holes. This was they coffin they carried next day to the little timber clearing nearby….”

The burial was small and private, and over the years, the exact location was lost.  Circa 1879 Peter Studebaker, of the South Bend, IN Studebaker Wagon Co. family, had this gravestone erected in what was thought to be the proximate position of the original grave. Here’s what it originally looked like.

So, what killed Nancy Hanks Lincoln?  The most common answer is that she died of milk sickness. According to David Kent,  “Less than normal rain in 1818 had resulted in dusty conditions and low crop yields. As a result, the Lincolns’ livestock instinctively foraged for food wherever they could find it, often into the underbrush of the neighboring forest. What they found was a weedy plant now known to be white snakeroot (current scientific name Ageratina altissima).”  The disease was contracted by eating either the meat or drinking the milk of an infected animal. 

Another possibility is that she died of what was once called consumption, now known as tuberculosis. Tuberculosis, or TB, is a contagious disease caused by exposure to a certain type of bacteria.  Before the bacteria was identified and antibiotics developed, TB killed many.

She may have died of brucellosis, a bacterial disease related to unpasteurized milk and undercooked meat.  It is highly contagious.  Shortly before she died, Nancy nursed relatives Thomas and Elizabeth Sparrow, so it’s possible that she caught this from them.

In short, there is no definitive answer to what killed Nancy Hanks Lincoln. Certainly no autopsy was performed; it’s highly likely that there was no one in the area qualified to perform one.  Life was a challenge for those living on what was the frontier, and the need to survive had to take precedence over questions of why a person died. 

Sources Consulted:

Kent, David . “What Killed Abraham Lincoln’s Mother? October 5, 2020.

Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, National Park Service, Lincoln City, IN.

Sandburg, Carl. Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years. Illustrated edition from Reader’s Digest, 1970.  University Archives and Special Collections,  E457 .S215 1970