Margaret (LaRue) Walters – WAE Production

Born December 11, 1789
Died October 26, 1864

Birth of Lincoln:

In 1808 Nancy Lincoln became pregnant for the second time. During the afternoon of Saturday, February 11, 1809, Nancy told her husband Thomas that the time was getting close. She asked Thomas to get a midwife. Thomas left the cabin, and when he reached the road he saw a neighbor, Abraham Enlow (then 16 years old). Enlow’s mother was a local midwife. Enlow told Thomas to go back and wait with his wife, and he promised to send his mother, and if she couldn’t come, he would get his half-sister Margaret “Peggy” La Rue Walters (wife of Conrad Walters). As it turned out, Peggy Walters was the one who returned to the Lincolns’ cabin. Abraham Enlow took Peggy Walters to the Lincolns’ cabin. Peggy was only 20 years old, but she had assisted her mother with other births in the area.

Many years later, in the summer of 1864, a neighborhood picnic took place near the location of the old Sinking Spring Farm. The picnic was on the property of a man named Richard Creal. During the picnic the conversation turned to the fact that President Abraham Lincoln had been born on the very land where the picnic was being held. One of the older women, Peggy Walters, mentioned she was present when Abraham Lincoln was born. She told the following story of the birth:

I was twenty years old, then, and helping to bring a baby into the world was more of an event to me than it became afterward. But I was married young, and had a baby of my own, and I had helped mother, who, as you know, was quite famous as a granny-woman, and I had gone several times to help when I was sent for. It was Saturday afternoon, I remember, when Tom Lincoln sent over and asked me to come, and I got up behind the boy that rode across to fetch me, and I rode across to the cabin that then stood here. It was a short ride, less than a mile. It was winter, but it was mild weather, and I don’t think there was any snow. If there was any then, it wasn’t much, and no snow fell that night. They sent for me quite as soon as there was any need, for when I got there nothing much was happening. They sent for her two aunts, Mis’ Betsy Sparrow and Mis’ Polly Friend, and these both came, but they lived about two miles away, so I was there before them, and we all had quite a spell to wait, and we got everything ready that we could.

They were poor folks, but so were most of their neighbors, and they didn’t lack anything they needed. Nancy had a good feather-bed under her; it wasn’t a goose-feather bed, hardly anyone had that kind then, but good hen feathers. And she had blankets enough. There was a little girl there, two years old. Her name was Sarah. She went to sleep before much of anything happened.

Well, there isn’t much that a body can tell about things of that kind. Nancy had about as hard a time as most women, I reckon, easier than some and maybe harder than a few. It all came along kind of slow, but everything was regular and all right. The baby was born just about sunup, on Sunday morning. Nancy’s two aunts took the baby and washed him and dressed him, and I looked after Nancy. That’s about all there is to tell. I remember it better than I do some cases that came later, because I was young, and hadn’t had so much experience as I had afterward. But I remember it all right well.

Oh, yes, and I remember one other thing. After the baby was born, Tom came and stood there beside the bed and looked down at Nancy, lying there, so pale and so tired, and he stood there with that sort of a hang-dog look that a man has, sort of guilty like, but mighty proud, and he says to me, ‘Are you sure she’s all right, Mis’ Walters’? And Nancy kind of stuck out her hand and reached for his, and said, ‘Yes, Tom, I am all right.’ And then she said, ‘You’re glad it’s a boy, Tom, aren’t you? So am I.’

No, there isn’t much you can tell anybody about things of that sort. But Tom Lincoln was mighty anxious about his wife, while she was suffering, and mighty good to her, too. And they were both proud and happy that it was a boy. You can’t tell much about the birth of a baby, except that you were there, and that the baby was born. But you can tell whether folks wants the baby or not, and whether they love or hate each other on account of it. I was young then, and I noticed and remembered everything. I remember it a heap better than I remember much that happened afterward. I tell you I never saw a prouder father than Tom Lincoln; and I never saw a mother more glad than Nancy was to know that her baby was a boy.

And they sort of explained to me how they named the little girl Sarah because the name Abraham didn’t fit, and Sarah was the next best. For Tom’s father, that was killed by Indians when Tom was a little boy, his name was the one they wanted the first baby to have. And so Nancy says to Tom, ‘Now we can use the name we couldn’t use before.’

And Tom says, says he, ‘Yes, Nancy, and it’s a right good name. This here baby boy,’ says he, ‘is named Abraham Lincoln.’

Margaret Larue Bill’s 1st cousin 6x removed

John Larue 1746-1792
Father of Margaret Larue

Isaac H. Larue Sr 1712-1795 Bill’s 5g grandfather
Father of John Larue

Jacob Larue Sr 1744-1821
Son of Isaac H. Larue Sr

Mary La Rue 1774-1825
Daughter of Jacob Larue Sr

Hugh McDonald 1808-1900
Son of Mary La Rue

James McDonald 1839-1928
Son of Hugh McDonald

Eva Lovilla McDonald 1862-1936
Daughter of James McDonald

Lillian Martinet Robison 1895-1984
Daughter of Eva Lovilla McDonald

Carol Elizabeth Gabel 1927-2011
Daughter of Lillian Martinet Robison

William Alfred Edwards 1960-
Son of Carol Elizabeth Gabel

The LaRue line is interesting and goes up two more generations to Bill’s 7th G-Grandfather Peter LaRue who is listed on Heads of Families Virginia. (West Virginia was still a part of Virginia at that time.)

His son was Issac LaRue Sr. Bill’s 6 GGrandfather

Isaac LaRue biography

https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/LBQ3-HY5/isaac-larue-1713-1795