A Wilson Family Tree
Notes for Herring Chrisman
Foreword to "Memoirs of Lincoln" by Herring Chrisman (William Herring Chrisman, 1930; obtained from https://archive.org/details/memoirsoflincoln00ilchri):
These articles from the pen of my father, Herring Chrisman, are submitted to all those interested in Abraham Lincoln, his forbears, and his contemporaries. They were written in the year 1900 as a family record and my principle motive in republishing them is to establish in the line of Lincoln ancestry the position of Bathsheba Herring, about whom there has been much controversy and doubt.
Herring Chrisman's great-grandfather, William Herring, and Abraham Lincoln's grandmother, Bathsheba Herring, were brother and sister.
Herring Chrisman was born September 16, 1823, in Rockingham County, Virginia, where his father was a large planter and slave owner, and where many of Lincoln's forbears lived. The youthful Herring had a Negro boy of his own age as his personal slave as long as he remained at home. He was educated at Washington and Lee University, and became Commonwealth Attorney for Rockingham at the age of twenty-one years.
During the menacing days of secession he became a member of the Chicago Bar, and worked to keep the Union together without force of arms. The rebellion was to him a war between brothers as his two younger brothers entered the Confederate army. During the time that he was in Chicago the city was enjoying a boom and he dealt to a considerable degree in real estate. In these transactions he was financed by his old friends in Virginia, and for them and himself he made some nice profits. He next moved to Knox County, Illinois, where he took up a homestead and bought one thousand acres of adjoining land. Here he fattened a thousand head of cattle on dollar corn to help feed the Union army, while at the same time his brother William was in the commissary department of the Confederate army buying large droves of cattle to feed the Southern army. As an active business man during those days he lived on his farm part of the time and practiced law in Galesburg and Monmouth, the county seats of Knox and Warren Counties.
From Illinois he followed his oldest son to Pottawattamie County, Iowa, where the family purchased 1,040 acres of prairie land. From there he rode on horseback to Monona County, Iowa, where, in a comparatively short time, he acquired , at an average cost of $5.60 per acre, 7,000 acres of untouched land near Mapleton, on which the native blue-stem swayed wave-like before the wind and the scrub oak grew unmolested. Still financed by stalwart partners who had confidence in his ability and judgment, he proceeded to break, fence, and improve these lands and in the meantime moved his family to Mapleton, from Abingdon, Illinois.
His remaining years were spent at Mapleton, where he divided his activities between his land, cattle, and law business. As a resident of Monona County he was elected County Attorney by a landslide of votes, and also was honored by being elected many times president of the Monona County Bar Association. His death occurred in Mapleton at the ripe old age of 87, on August 14, 1911.
Since Herring Chrisman personally knew Lincoln, the practicing attorney, in Illinois, and then lived on through the years in which Lincoln's name became immortal, he naturally was well fitted to express the thought of the times in regard to Lincoln.
It is hoped that, with the ever growing reverence for Abraham Lincoln and the increasing demand for information concerning his life and family, this contribution may add its bit to the already brilliant luster of his undying name.
WILLIAM HERRING CHRISMAN.
Mapleton, Iowa
Note: Some of the information in these pages is uncertain. Please let me know of errors or omissions using the email link above. ...Mike Wilson
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