what was lincoln's wife's name?
Nancy Lincoln
entailment
 Lincoln 's mother , Nancy , is widely assumed to have been the daughter of Lucy Hanks , although no record of Nancy Hanks ' birth has ever been found . According to William Ensign Lincoln 's book The Ancestry of Abraham Lincoln , Nancy was the daughter of Joseph Hanks ; however , the debate continues over whether she was born out of wedlock . Still another researcher , Adin Baber , claims that Nancy Hanks was the daughter of Abraham Hanks and Sarah Harper of Virginia . 

entailment
 Lincoln 's first romantic interest was Ann Rutledge , whom he met when he first moved to New Salem ; by 1835 , they were in a relationship but not formally engaged . She died at the age of 22 on August 25 , 1835 , most likely of typhoid fever . In the early 1830s , he met Mary Owens from Kentucky when she was visiting her sister . 

neutral
 Her interest in the former president had a personal basis as well . One of her sons had nearly been drafted in 1969 shortly after Nixon had won election on the promise to end the Vietnam War . ( At the last minute , sympathetic physicians had reclassified Bruce Brodie as unfit for military service on the basis of his allergies . ) 

contradiction
 To Brodie , Jefferson ’ s ambiguous posturings on slavery could be explained by his personal life . If he were conducting a 28 @-@ year affair with a slave , then he could not free his slaves because once freed , Virginia law would force them from the state , unless he gained permission from the legislature for them to stay . He could only continue his liaison with Hemings if his slaves remained slaves . Two of the most prominent Jefferson biographers of the twentieth century , Dumas Malone and Merrill Peterson , had relied on Jefferson family testimony by two Randolph grandchildren who named his Carr nephews as fathers . They discounted other evidence about this alleged sexual relationship , including by Madison Hemings in 1873 , who identified Jefferson as his father . The relationship was first reported in 1802 by the journalist James T. Callender when Jefferson was President , after failing to win an appointment by the president . 

entailment
 Several significant family events took place during Lincoln 's youth in Indiana . On October 5 , 1818 , Nancy Lincoln died of milk sickness , leaving eleven @-@ year @-@ old Sarah in charge of a household that included her father , nine @-@ year @-@ old Abraham , and Dennis Hanks , Nancy 's nineteen @-@ year @-@ old orphaned cousin . On December 2 , 1819 , Lincoln 's father married Sarah " Sally " Bush Johnston , a widow from Elizabethtown , Kentucky , with three children of her own . Abraham became very close to his stepmother , whom he referred to as " Mother " . Those who knew Lincoln as a teenager later recalled him being very distraught over his sister Sarah 's death on January 20 , 1828 , while giving birth to a stillborn son . 
