November 6, 1860. Ancestry Lincoln's first known ancestor in America was Samuel Lincoln, who migrated from Hingham, England to Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1637. Samuel's son, Mordecai, remained in Massachusetts, but Samuel's grandson, who was also named Mordecai, began the family's western migration. John Lincoln, Samuel's great-grandson, continued the westward journey. Born in New Jersey, John moved to Pennsylvania, then brought his family to Virginia. John's son, Captain Abraham Lincoln, who earned that rank for his service in the Virginia militia, was the future president's paternal grandfather and namesake. Born in Berks County, Pennsylvania, he moved with his father and other family members to Virginia's Shenandoah Valley around 1766. The family settled near Linville Creek, in Augusta County, now Rockingham County, Virginia. Captain Lincoln bought the Virginia property from his father in 1773. Thomas Lincoln, the future president's father, was Captain Lincoln's son. Thomas was born in Virginia in January 1778 and moved west to Jefferson County, Kentucky, with his father, mother and siblings around 1782, when he was about five years old. In May 1786, at the age of forty-two, Captain Abraham Lincoln was killed in an Indian ambush while working his fields in Kentucky. Eight-year-old Thomas witnessed his father's murder and might have ended up a victim if his brother, Mordecai, had not shot the attacker. After Captain Lincoln's death, Thomas's mother, Bathsheba Lincoln, moved to Washington County, Kentucky, while Thomas worked at odd jobs in several Kentucky locations. Thomas also spent a year working in Tennessee, before settling with members of his family in Hardin County, Kentucky, in the early 1800s. The identity of Lincoln's maternal grandfather is unclear. In a conversation with William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner and one of his biographers, the president implied that his grandfather was "a Virginia planter or large farmer", but did not identify him. Lincoln felt that it was from this aristocratic grandfather that he had inherited "his power of analysis, his logic, his mental activity, his ambition, and all the qualities that distinguished him from the other members and descendants of the Hanks family." Lincoln's maternal grandmother, Lucy Hanks, may have migrated to Kentucky, with her daughter, Nancy. There was a debate over whether Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, was born out of wedlock. Mitochondrial DNA tests of descendants of Lucy Hanks have shown this to be true. Nancy resided with Rachael Shipley Berry, and her husband, Richard Berry Sr.,