Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 13, 1993 TAG: 9302150257
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LINVILLE LENGTH: Long
SMALL CEREMONY IS IN LOVING MEMORY
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S ANCESTORS are buried on a hill outside Harrisonburg. Each year, Lincoln buffs gather there to mark the Great Emancipator's birthday.
Phil Stone figures if Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union, the least he could do is preserve the memory of the Lincoln ancestors buried in his neighbor's hayfield.
So for the past 17 years, Stone has carried out his personal Lincoln's Birthday observance with single-minded determination.
Some years, it's been just Stone and his dog who braved the February weather. Stone went ahead with his little ritual anyway. "The dog liked it," the Harrisonburg lawyer says. "He stayed the whole time."
Other years, upward of 100 people have joined him in the family cemetery on Sam Shank's farm, the one with the blue Harvestore silo emblazoned "Lincoln Homestead, Since 1768," to honor the 20 or so Lincoln relatives buried in Southern soil.
It's not much as far as ceremonies go.
Stone gives a little talk about Lincoln's genealogy, how the president's great-grandparents settled along Linville Creek in 1767, how the president's grandfather and namesake grew to manhood here, how the president's father was born here, how the future president himself was curious enough about his Shenandoah Valley connections that he once wrote to relatives there to inquire about his roots.
And then it's over.
But the way Stone sees things, it's the point that counts. Or all three points, as Stone lays out his rationale for the ceremony in lawyerly fashion.
First, he submits, Lincoln was the nation's best president. "And as we become more cynical about leadership, it's important that he stand the test of time."
Second, there's a certain sadness in the air because the Lincoln family has departed the Shenandoah Valley - and the world. Lincoln's children left no direct heirs, and the Lincoln relatives in the valley have long since passed on, so there's no one left to care for the graves of the president's pioneer forebears. "It's important to me that somebody is carrying on a tradition that Lincoln would be happy to know is being done," Stone says.
Third, he contends, "this is an educational activity for our community." The great Lincoln biographers have all explored Lincoln's Virginia roots, and through the years a small army of Lincolnphiles have made their pilgrimage to this cemetery about seven miles north of Harrisonburg.
One of Stone's neighbors made his first money as a youth when Carl Sandberg paid him a dime to escort him to the cemetery. Many a time Stone leaves his house Sunday morning for church and spots a knot of weekend tourists hiking through the field. He always stops and offers a little lecture on Lincoln.
Few people in the Shenandoah Valley, whose farmlands were once hailed as the breadbasket of the Confederacy, know much about the local Lincoln connection.
When Stone tells the story of Lincoln's Virginia ancestry, the sweep of early American history comes vividly to life:
How the Lincolns migrated down the Valley Pike from Pennsylvania and farmed the Shenandoah Valley before wanderlust carried them beyond the mountains to Kentucky and Illinois.
How the Civil War was truly a war of brother against brother, even for its president. Lincoln's army burned the barns of his rebel cousins in the valley. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves owned by Rockingham County Lincolns. One weathered tombstone in the family plot is elegantly inscribed: "The last of the Lincoln slaves, Uncle Ned and his wife Queen."
Besides, Stone admits, "I enjoy it so much I'd rationalize other reasons if I had to."
From the time he first lamented in 1976 that Lincoln's Shenandoah Valley roots weren't being properly recognized, Stone has carried out this observance every year except one, when he had a horrible case of the flu. That time his son, then 13, stood in for him.
Stone has endured all kinds of weather to carry out his observance. The worst was the time a blizzard left him stranded in Richmond on legal business. Nobody was braving the 40 inches of snow. "It's an emergency," Stone pleaded. "I've just got to get home."
Somehow, he made it back to Linville, but found the snow in his driveway so deep that not even a four-wheel drive vehicle could make it through. Instead, he had to borrow a neighbor's tractor, which he rode up the hill while still dressed in his courtroom clothes.
Another year, the snow was squalling so badly that only one other person, General District Judge John Paul, bothered to show up. Paul, like Stone, never misses a chance to honor Lincoln's ancestors. "When you're standing out here in the cold," Paul says, "you know something of the hardships they endured. You get a feel for how tough they were."
That year, as the two huddled in the cold, Stone noticed a tall figure in a stovepipe hat striding through the ghostly whiteness toward them. "I punched the judge and said `I think we've been out here too long. I think I see Lincoln.'"
It turned out to be a local actor who portrays Lincoln in school productions.
Beyond putting a small notice in the Harrisonburg newspaper, Stone has never tried to make a big production of the observance. Nevertheless, its reputation has spread, thanks to his fellow history buffs in the National Lincoln Association.
Last year's observance may have been the biggest, and perhaps the most poignant. One of the visitors was Cvijeto Job, the former Yugoslavian ambassador to the United Nations. A few months later, as his native country splintered into a gruesome civil war of its own, Job wrote an article for a magazine in Belgrade in which he reflected on what he had learned at the Lincoln Day observance in Linville.
"All civil wars are the same," Job wrote, "and each one is different. But the civil war of the United States of America was unique. Unique in that the victorious side was led by a man who did not indulge in hatred of the other side and who at the time of triumph was not brandishing the sword of retribution and revenge . . . We must follow Lincoln's way before the last Serb and Croat, Orthodox, Muslim and Catholic, Macedonian and Albanian, slaughter each other . . . "
This year, there were expectations the crowd at the Lincoln cemetery would be the biggest ever. The local Sons of the American Revolution planned to drive a ceremonial marker into the earth beside the tomb of Lincoln's great-uncle who had fought in the revolution. The Junior ROTC from Harrisonburg High School was called out to present the colors.
But the skies clouded up Friday morning and dumped 4 inches of snow on the valley. All but a dozen hardy souls were scared away.
An 86-year-old neighbor called Stone to say she couldn't make the observance and suggested he postpone it. He'd get a bigger crowd that way, she pointed out.
Stone told the woman he appreciated her concern about slipping on icy roads. "But then I said, `Margaret, I don't do this for the crowds. I do this for Lincoln.'"
\ LINCOLN's VIRGINIA ANCESTORS\ \ "Virginia John" and Rebecca Lincoln moved from Pennsvlylania to Linville in 1767. They were the future president's great-grandparents. They're buried in the family cemetery just off U.S. 42.
\ "Captain Abraham Lincoln, the future president's grandfather, grew up in Linville and served in the local militia during the Revolutionary War.
\ Thomas Lincoln, the future president's father, was born in Linville. In 1781, when Thomas was a toddler, "Captain Abraham" moved his family to Kentucky, where he was killed by Indians.
\ One of the future president's cousins, David Lincoln, ran the Lincoln Inn near Linville from 1833 until 1849. It's said that Abraham Lincoln visited Linville in 1847 on his way to take a seat in Congress, although there's no proof.
\ However, in 1848, then-Rep. Abraham Lincoln wrote David Lincoln to inquire for information about his Virginia relatives.
\ The last Lincolns to live on the family land at Linville sold the farm in 1874. Other relatives stayed in the Shenandoah Valley until 1938.
\ For more information on Lincoln's Virginia roots, write Phil Stone at 100 South Main St., Harrisonburg, Va. 22801.