LINCOLN'S NJ ROOTS... OR "LITTLE DEBBIE'S GRAVE"
It is not commonly known that Abraham Lincoln, our sixteenth president, had ancestors who lived in our weird state. Between 1710 and 1714, two Lincoln brothers, Mordecai and Abraham, migrated to Monmouth County from their birthplace in Hingham, Massachusetts.

After settling in New Jersey, the Lincoln brothers operated a blacksmith shop on the outskirts of the sleepy village of Imlaystown, not far from today’s Six Flags Great Adventure Amusement Park. The ruins of the Lincoln blacksmith shop are still standing today.

Mordecai Lincoln married a New Jersey girl named Hannah Salter, daughter of Richard Salter, a wealthy mill owner. Mordecai and Hannah had five children, one of whom was a little girl named Deborah. This Lincoln couple also turned out to be the great-great-grandparents of “Honest Abe", sixteenth president of the United States.

On May 15, 1720, three-year-old Deborah Lincoln died of a childhood disease. Not having their own burial ground, Mordecai and Hannah were obliged to bury their little daughter in a plot at Ye Olde Robbins Burial Place, established in 1695 by the Robbins family of Monmouth County.

Today, Ye Olde Robbins Burial Place is an overgrown, tick-infested thicket, barely visible from a country road. To visit little Debbie's grave, one has to follow a narrow path leading into a dense forest. On roughly cut, red sandstone block is an inscription which reads: "Deborah Lincon (the second L was used interchangeably by the early Lincolns) aged 3 years 4 months May 15, 1720". Years later, an iron bar was placed around the grave, honoring little Debbie as the great-grandaunt of President Abraham Lincoln.

Shortly after Deborah's death, the Lincoln's got their asses out of New Jersey and settled in Berks County, Pennsylvania. After Pennsylvania, the Lincoln descendants settled in Virginia, Indiana, and finally Kentucky, where Abraham Lincoln was born in his famous log cabin on February 12, 1809.

On a crisp November morning in 1991, when I first visited the site the locals warned me not to reveal the exact location of the obscure burial ground where little Debbie was resting. Over the years there had apparently been reports of locals hearing mournful sobs emanating from the graveyard, especially during the month of May when little Debbie died. There were also tales about ghostly horse-drawn funeral processions entering the graveyard on cool spring nights. I wanted to share this slice of Jerseyana with Weird NJ readers.
— Stephen Conte

Photos by Stephen Conte and William Angus