This first story has been full of controversy on many levels for many years. Interesting to read are both the Abraham Lincoln and the North Carolina Enloe Family web sites, which are full of arguments pro and con.
The local legend says that Abraham Lincoln was born in Clay County; however; numerous books and articles have been published indicating he was born elsewhere. For example, the 2003 book, The Tarheel Lincoln, by Richard E. Eller and Jerry A. Goodnight, indicates that he was born in 19 different places! Many years ago, the state of Illinois claimed Abe as “their own” and adopted their state motto, “The Land of Lincoln.”
Does Clay County have a connection to our 16th President? It could be a true, because some evidence supports the belief that Lincoln’s father was Abraham Enloe, 17701840, who lived in the southwestern section of Clay County. While his wife was having pregnancy complications, Enola asked young Nancy Hanks from Antioch, Hampshire County, West Virginia, to come live with the family and help his wife. The story goes that Nancy did live with the family in Clay County for a while when she herself became pregnant. Subsequently, Abe was born. One story says, when Abe was only three days old, for some unclear reason, Enloe hired horse traders that were in the area to take young Abe and mother Nancy with them to Kentucky. There is some evidence that on their journey to Kentucky, the party spent their first night in a log cabin on Tatham Mountain near Robbinsville, North Carolina (John Parris, columnist for the Asheville-Citizen Times, in his book, These Storied Mountains, 1972). Somehow she made it to Kentucky because official records show that Nancy Hanks married Thomas Lincoln in 1806 in Washington County, Kentucky, and other stories say that he adopted young Abraham. An undeniable interesting note to the legend: A man named Thomas Lincoln is buried in Harshaw Chapel in nearby Cherokee County.
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