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A multimedia presentation by Bob Batz Jr. and Steve Mellon
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

JOHNSTOWN -- If you happen into Vitamin World at Johnstown's Galleria mall, you might be rung up by an assistant manager who bears a powerful resemblance to the president on your $5 bills. You might even say, as others do, "You really look like Abe!"

"Thank you," the man might reply, with a smile spreading just above his bygone beard. Or he'll tease, "Which one? There are several Abrahams in the family."

Meaning that Abraham Lincoln's family.

And his family.

Honest.

This man is Ralph C. Lincoln, and he is, as he puts it, "an 11th-generation Lincoln," going back to Samuel, or Samuel the weaver as he's known on the family tree, who emigrated from England to Hingham, Mass., in 1637.

Ralph Lincoln's relationship to the 16th U.S. president is far removed and complicated, but he can break it down for you by going in three directions:

Going backward, from son to father, the president Abraham was born of Thomas who was born of Abraham who was born of John, or "Virginia John" -- so he was Abe's great grandfather.

Going sideways, Virginia John's brother was Mordecai, who settled in Pennsylvania's Fayette County in the 1700s.

Going forward, Mordecai begat Benjamin begat Mordecai begat Mordecai begat William Edward Rose begat Carl who begat Carl who begat Ralph, in 1956.

Many in that line lived and died in Western Pennsylvania, which still is home to countless descendants of surnames including Matthews, Hunt and Jones.

Dozens, including the president's great grandfather's brother Mordecai, are buried in the tiny Lincoln family cemetery between Connellsville and Uniontown.

But these days, the local link is lost on most. Not even the Connellsville Area Historical Society seems to know anything about the Lincolns in our midst.

Ralph Lincoln thinks that's sad. In his own quiet, and some might say quirky, ways, he aims to help keep this significant slice of local history alive.

The 49-year-old Mr. Lincoln says, "I've gotten more comments since I've grown the beard" -- for the past two years -- but as striking are his facial similarities and his rail-thin 5 foot 10 inch frame. "Abe was like, 6-3 ... 6-4?" He grins. "I don't meet his height but I meet his good looks."

His mother, Clara, nods in agreement in the living room of the split level they share in the Somerset County town of Berlin, where they moved from Connellsville in the early 1980s.

Truth be told, Mrs. Lincoln says, most Berliners think the beard looks "simple," but she likes it and encouraged him to keep it. The guy at the local mini-mart always hails her son as "Mr. Abraham." Her hairstylist loaned him a vintage top hat that really caps the look, though Mr. Lincoln, a stickler for authenticity, notes it's not the tall stovepipe hat that was Abe's trademark.

On the wall behind him hang a presidential portrait and a Lincoln coat of arms. The dining room table is piled with scrapbooks and books and photographs, a collection started by Mr. Lincoln's late father, Carl.

The Lincoln link

	Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Ralph C. Lincoln, a distant cousin of the Great Emancipator: "Abe was like, 6-3 ... 6-4?. I don't meet his height but I meet his good looks." Click photo for larger image.

Carl Lincoln became fascinated with his lineage as a young man, and often visited his uncle William Lincoln, a farmer who lived in the Fayette County hamlet of New Salem.

William Lincoln, too, became known for his resemblance to this famous cousin, especially after The Pittsburgh Press put him on the cover of its Sunday Roto magazine with an artist-drawn beard in the early 1950s.

William Lincoln passed on the family story about the then-Whig, ex-Congressman Abe Lincoln's visit, in 1849, to his Fayette County kin, some of whom argued with him because they were Democrats.

But Carl Lincoln, who worked as an auditor for the state and was active in Republican politics, was proud of his roots. After retiring, he researched them not just locally, but by traveling with his wife to historic sites from Massachusetts to Illinois.

At that time, their son Ralph -- the middle of seven siblings -- didn't care about any of this. He was working, at a local grocery.

Then he began to suffer years of debilitating symptoms of what turned out to be a brain tumor. "I was supposed to die," he says. But the tumor was successfully removed in 1996, and he recovered -- most everything except his memory of his own past.

Working with his father until he died in 1999, he became consumed with learning the family history -- a quest he and his mother have continued together.

In the family

Mr. Lincoln's Yahoo profile -- with a very Abe-ish photo -- lists one of his interests as "genealogy," which he and his mother frequently pursue at libraries around the region. That's how they'll spend some of today's Presidents Day holiday. Right now, they're going great guns on her Collins family, which Mr. Lincoln finds as interesting.

"There's always something new to find," he says.

As much as he respects the Lincoln who became known as the Great Emancipator and the preserver of the Union, he finds many of his other relatives to be greats in their own right, and not just the judges and governors.

He finds it intriguing that, over generations, many Lincolns tended to excel at the same avocations: farming, clerking, law and public service. He served as a Republican committeeman.

His mother points out that, like Abe who overcame much adversity, her son has proven to be quite resilient.

He doesn't mind when people remark on his looks. "I do enjoy an intelligent conversation."

After his brain tumor operation at Allegheny General Hospital, a cardiologist recognized not only him, but also his heart arrhythmia as running in the Lincolns who live in England.

A doctor of his mother's at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore took one look at him and immediately asked if he has Marfan syndrome, a connective tissue disorder some believe Abe Lincoln had because of his out-of-proportion limbs and gauntness.

(Ralph doesn't. More odd was, that doctor also told him that during med school he'd roomed with a descendant of Abraham's assassin, John Wilkes Booth.)

That trip to Baltimore was as close as Ralph Lincoln has come to the Lincoln Memorial, but he has been to Gettysburg.

A final resting place

He's as impressed by all the historic sites in this region, sites which he worries are being lost for good. He worries especially about the local Lincoln cemetery.

Rectangled by a rusting iron fence, these rows of headstones, as worn and broken and missing as old teeth, now sit in the shadow of a new concrete block building that's part of an industrial park just above busy U.S. Route 119.

Mr. Lincoln struggles with the rusting gate, then steps haltingly, with the limp his tumor left, over the windblown grass. This and the rolling land all around used to be part of Mordecai's two farms, named "Union Green" and "Discord" (over land rights).

What continues to concern him and his mother is the construction equipment ready to develop the land on two other sides of the private plot.

But Bethelboro's Sam Hunt, a Lincoln descendant in the association that maintains the cemetery, says it won't be sold. He says Abe Lincoln himself visited it in 1849 and on his way to Washington, D.C., to be inaugurated.

Presidents Day is not a big deal to Ralph Lincoln, but he thinks it might be a good day for Americans to contemplate and appreciate their history, in whatever way makes sense to them.

You won't see him dressing like Abraham Lincoln. But if it's not raining, he might be wearing his prized brown fedora.

It's something else he inherited from his father, who bought it in 1959, and he thinks it suits this Mr. Lincoln just fine.

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