Blow the tannery whistle: A tale of two Abrahams
I remember a day in March when I was in the seventh grade. We were on the second floor of the old Sylva Elementary building, and we had a kind of ritual that involved the pencil sharpener.
We made a habit of sharpening our pencils often because it meant that we stared out the window which was raised and sometimes remained at the pencil sharpener until our pencils were reduced to a little stub. The boys always spit out the window and watched the dollop of spit sail down to the old water fountain. Well, on this windy day in March, my dollop didn’t go anywhere because it blew back into the room and landed on this big kid’s nose who sat near the window.
I didn’t know him, but we all called him “Honest Abe.” I remember asking Billy Crawford why we called him Honest Abe and he said it was because he is an Enloe, and his granddaddy is thought to be the father of Abraham Lincoln. Well, that impressed me because I knew who Abraham Lincoln was!
Now about the dollop of spit on Honest Abe’s nose. It turned out that “Honest Abe” was mad. He got up and wiped his nose and came up to me at the pencil sharpener and plucked me up and smacked me down. I got up and he smacked me again. I figured out that if I got up, he would smack me down again, so I stayed on the floor until Honest Abe went back to his seat.
Now, I told you about this bit of drama so I could tell you a story about the man named Abraham Enloe who just might be Abraham Lincoln’s daddy! There is a famous book about this story. Now, bear with me and let us jump into the future a few years to a hot July day in Cherokee with traffic backed up to Gateway and I am working the cash register in my Uncle Allen’s Reservation Grill. We are unpacking boxes and stashing cans of pintos, cream, okra and tomatoes and stocking the kitchen shelves with vegetables, and each can has a picture of the contents. That is so Lightening, the cook who cannot read, will know what is in each can.
I noticed that there are several boxes of a book entitled “The Genesis of Lincoln,” by a man named Cathey who lives in Sylva.
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I asked Uncle Allen, “Are you selling books now?”
“Yes,” he said. “That one sells like hot cakes.”
“No kidding,” I said. “What is it about?
“Well,” Uncle Allen said, “Mr. Cathey claims that he can prove that Abraham Lincoln’s father was a farmer who lived near Cherokee.”
I picked up a copy of the book and opened it to a bunch of photographs of Lincoln and Abraham Enloe and it looked like the two men share the same features. They are all tall and skinny with large ears! I wouldn’t say that they share “ugly” features, but they simply looked like men who live close to the earth.
Uncle Allen said, “Take one and read it,” so I did ... several times. Let me tell you about the book. It has 372 pages and James Cathey has included over 20 endorsements from notable people who have reviewed the book’s evidence and have concluded that the author is correct in his assumption that Abraham Enloe is indeed the father of Abraham Lincoln.
As I have mentioned, the book contains several photographs that suggest that the resemblance between the features of Enloe and Lincoln is striking. For me, the author’s narrative has a singular flaw which suggests that Cathey’s description of African Americans reveals that he considers them “child-like” and possibly inferior to their white owners. Of course, this has no bearing on his claims regarding Lincoln’s birth.
Permit me one more change of scenery. I guess it is 1954 and I am now a college student at Western Carolina Teacher’s College. The college has just hired a somewhat famous lady who teaches drama and I am registered to take a course that is called “speech” but it is also “theatre.” The semi-famous lady is Josefina Niggli, who is a graduate of the University Of North Carolina and has published two novels that became Book of the Month selections, and one has been filmed (“Sombrero”) and she is currently writing for television (“Have Gun, Will Travel”) and she resembles a Persian cat and she tends to start sentences with “Darling.”
I quickly learned that she did not care for my mountain dialect, for she said “Darling, when you speak, I shudder.”
During our first class, I was delighted to learn that she is a Carolina Playmaker, and she intends to use some of the student one-acts written by Fred Koch’s class … a class that included Thomas Wolfe, Paul Green and someone from Sylva who had written a one-act pay about Abraham Enloe!
When Niggli asked for volunteers to direct a one-act, the student next to me asked for “Leavings.”
After she read the script, she asked me to portray … Abraham Enloe! Of course, everyone in Western North Carolina had heard the story. “Yes! I will!” I chirruped … and I did.
I wore a pair of overalls and no shirt and one “gallus” which is what mountain folks call suspenders. I still remember my best line, which was spoken to Nancy Hanks on the day Nancy leaves the Enloe farm with a fellow named Tom Lincoln who takes her to Kentucky. The production was only done in the class, but I treasure the memory. In the final scene of “Leavings,” Abraham Enloe stands in the doorway watching Nancy Hanks depart and he becomes a kind of prophet. He quotes an Old Testament story in which a woman named Hagar is forced to leave since she has a child that was born out of wedlock.
Enloe addresses Nancy Hanks, who can’t hear him since she is gone, telling her what God said to Hagar. God said, “I will make him a great nation.”
Shortly after the publication of “The Genesis of Lincoln,” a number of stories were published which were based on the belief that Nancy Hanks was already pregnant when she arrived at the Enloe farm, and this belief led to the publication of a series of fanciful tales that suggested that Lincoln’s father was one of several possibilities which were notable individuals who spent time in the dwelling where Nancy Hanks was employed prior to her arriving at Abraham Enloe’s farm.
Possible candidates were Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun. The last time I counted, there were six sites that claimed to give historic facts about Lincoln’s birth. Among the most devoted believers of the Abraham Enloe version was Robert Lee Madison, the founder of Western Carolina University.
(Gary Carden is one of Southern Appalachia’s most revered literary figures and has won a number of significant awards for his books and plays over the years, including the Book of the Year Award from the Appalachian Writers Association in 2001, the Brown Hudson Award for Folklore in 2006 and the North Carolina Arts Council Award for Literature in 2012. His most recent book, “Stories I lived to tell,” is available at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, or online through uncpress.org.)
