from Abraham Lincoln <oldmanlinc@yahoo.com Here is the story about me in Country Living Magazine in February 2003 issue. >>OHIO: Land of Lincoln Brookville man sharfes ancestry - and a name - with the sixteenth president By BRUCE H. DAWSON Popular legend has Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States, as a youth sitting in a log cabin in Kentucky, reading and studying by the glow of candlelight. Fast forward nearly two centuries, and you'll find a retired Abraham Lincoln sitting in a comfortable brick ranch house in Brookville designing websites and doing other graphical work by the glow of a computer monitor. Honest Abe, meet your namesake, Ohio's Abraham Lincoln, who shares ancestry with the president and who even bears some resemblance to his famous relative. At just over six feet tall, Brookville's Abraham Lincoln is close in height to his namesake and in 1974 was even convinced into growing a beard to see how close his facial likeness was. Although the two share a common heritage, one thing they don't share is a birthday. The entire country will celebrate President Lincoln's birthday on Feb. 12, while Ohio's Abraham Lincoln has to wait until Oct. 25 to celebrate his special day. President Lincoln was descended from John Lincoln, son of Mordecai Lincoln and Hannah Salter, whereas Ohio's Lincoln descends from Thomas Lincoln, son of Mordecai and his second wife Mary Robeson. "I'm a half-third cousin, three times removed," says Lincoln, who prefers to be called Abraham, not Abe. The two Lincolns were born at home, and it was his mother's midwife who suggested the twentieth-century Abraham be named after his famous relative. The president also was named after a relative, his grandfather Abraham. If having a famous moniker wasn't enough, Lincoln, born and raised in the nearby Darke County town of Gordon, married Patricia Ann Custer of Arcanum, who is a cousin to General George Armstrong Custer. They have five children, none of whom are named Abraham. Growing up in western Ohio, Lincoln's life has borne some similarities to his famous relative's. He has been a schoolteacher, served in the U.S.Army, worked in research and development for the National Cash Register Company in Dayton and worked in graphics and photography. It was the latter work that led him first to retire from teaching in 1976 to start a full-time graphic design and calligraphy business out of his Brookville home. In this part of his career, Lincoln has published more than 25 books - mainly on calligraphy, one of which sold more than a million copies - and a 13-week Public Broadcasting System series titled Calligraphy is Fun shown in the U.S. and abroad on the Learning Channel. Lincoln has won many awards during his life for his paintings, drawings and woodcarving, and some of his work still adorns boardrooms and lobbies of buildings around the country. Additionally he's done illustrations for national magazines. At one point in his career, he even held a job with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, started by Allan Pinkerton, who in 1861 foiled a plan to assassinate President Lincoln. Likewise, President Lincoln had numerous careers during his life. It's reported that he rowed passengers on a steamboat, worked as a store clerk and a postmaster, owned a small business, and served as lawyer before entering politics. Ohio's Lincoln certainly can relate to this career movement. "I just always seemed to get involved with a job or project and participate in it for about 10 years and then move on," he explained. As a young boy, the modern-day Lincoln was forced to move around Darke County when he was growing up after his parents divorced when he was very young. "My mother and l were almost destitute. We had to move around a lot for her to find employment," he said. Each time they moved, young Abraham had to switch schools and at each new school he would run into a familiar problem - his famous name. "When I went to a new school, I had to get up front of the class and tell everyone my name was Abraham Lincoln. The children always laughed, and I never understood why. No one laughed at their names." Because of this, Lincoln admits to developing an inferiority complex and shyness that he would later in life struggle to overcome. Eventually, he would beat the shyness, going so far as to post photos of his aortic aneurysm surgery on an Internet website with an anti-smoking message. His mother advised him to be proud of his strong name because he was named for a strong relative. Later in life, he found doors opened for him because of his name. "Eventually, I realized what an asset it was to be named Abraham Lincoln because no one ever forgets your name or who you are," he said. When he went into the Army in 1953 after basic training in Kentucky - near where President Lincoln grew up - he was sent to Yokohama, Japan, eventually becoming a member of the 1st Cavalry Division's 5th Cavalry Regiment. "In the Far East, right after the Korean War, there were more than 500 George Washingtons in the service and only one Abraham Lincoln. That was me," he said. During his tour, he began taking photographs of the area. Today, those photos are the subject of a website he designed that has made him somewhat of a local hero in Japan. The web site features hundreds of black and white and also color photographs of the town of Sendai and shows the city during its reconstruction from the devastation of the World War in bombings. "The Japanese people at the time were fascinated by the color photographs as they had never seen any," Lincoln said. Today, those photos are the only historical records of the city, because all earlier documents had been destroyed during the bombing. You can see them at http://pearl.age.jp.whizlinc. It's been featured in Japanese newspapers and even shown on television in Sendai. Other websites Lincoln has designed include ones for the city of Brookville and Clay Township in southwest Ohio. Now at the age of 68, Lincoln has retired from everything except working at his Web design business, Whiz Bang Graphics, which keeps him sitting in his comfortable brick ranch house reading and studying by the glow of the computer monitor. Bruce Dawson is a freelance writer from Lewisburg.<< NOTE: When this author interviewed me I did not yet have my new Sendai-shi site online. You can see it here: www.sendai-shi.com Thought you might enjoy reading it. It should also appear on line at www.countryliving.com sometime next month. Abraham Lincoln --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now