Featured Exhibit

This exhibit changes several times a year.

President Lincoln's Rockingham Roots

Opening on the birthday of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, this exhibit tells the story of Lincoln’s ancestors in the Shenandoah Valley.

The President’s great-grandfather, “Virginia John” Lincoln, of English ancestry, moved his family from Pennsylvania to Rockingham County in 1768. Virginia John, his wife Rebecca, and their nine children, including the President’s grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, age 24, settled into a log house on Linville Creek. Those Lincolns and their descendants became prosperous and prominent families in the fertile land, among them farmers, cattlemen, a surveyor, and an innkeeper.

Abraham Lincoln married a local girl, Bathsheba Herring, and had five children; his son, Thomas, was to become the father of the President. Abraham moved his family west to the frontier of Virginia (later to become Kentucky) in 1780 when Thomas was age four. In 1809, the future president was born.

The exhibit highlights the President’s connection to his Rockingham roots through his own handwritten letters to his cousin, David Lincoln, at Lacey Spring and through the President’s meeting with Representative J.T. Harris, of Rockingham County, on the eve of the Civil War. It contrasts the dirt floor log cabin of the President’s birth with the stately Lincoln Homestead, built by the President’s great uncle, Jacob Lincoln, still standing on Linville Creek. It underscores the “brother against brother” tension of the Civil War as the Confederate Lincolns fought the Union army led by their cousin Abe.

Photographs, drawings, documents, and artifacts from the Linville and Lacey Spring homes, including a Confederate sword, bring more than 200 years of Shenandoah Valley Lincoln family history to life.

See the Programs webpage for programs about this exhibit.

View previous Featured Exhibits.