Preface by the American author

Just half a century ago to-day (Friday, 15 October, 1858), the writer, a very much excited small boy effervescing with patriotic enthusiasm, accompanied his father and kinsmen, Senator Trumbull, to the Franklin House in Alton, Illinois, where his elders were calling to tender their congratulations to their old friend, Abraham Lincoln, after the triumphant close of the last of the seven memorable debates with Senator Douglas.

Introductory

It has been the general belief, a belief which was shared even by the illustrious President himself, that Abraham Lincoln's remote ancestry, as well as his immediate parentage, was of the humblest; that the Lincoln family were so low born as to make it a futile task to endeavour [sic] to penetrate the obscurity from which they sprung, and that the commanding figure of Abraham Lincoln was a mere fortuitous circumstance, a "sport" of nature, rather than the result of centuries of inbred and inherited qualities derived from worthy forefathers.

Chapter I
The Emigrant, His Home and Parentage

Leaving the train at Kimberley station on the Norwich and Dereham line, and taking the road to Watton, — the reputed scene of the murder of the "Babes in the Wood," — you find yourself, after a couple of miles of almost imperceptible ascent between typical English hedgerows, on the crest of a billow of hills of no great height, extending, roughly speaking, from northwest to southeast of the horizon.