Thomas Lincoln is a minor character in the 2012 action horror film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. He is the husband of Nancy Lincoln, father of Abraham Lincoln, father-in-law of Mary Todd Lincoln, and grandfather of Willie Lincoln.
He is portrayed by Joseph Mawle.
Background[]
Thomas Lincoln’s was born in 1778 to Abraham Lincoln Sr. and Bathsheba Lincoln. He moved from Virginia to Kentucky with his parents, while still a child. At the age of eight, Thomas saw his father murdered before his eyes by a party of Shawnee savages.
Since then, Thomas Lincoln’s life had been one of continual struggle and frequent tragedy. Life was never the same for Thomas Lincoln as with no inheritance, he was left to wander from town to town, toiling in an endless series of odd jobs. Of his many occupations, he managed to get apprenticed with a carpenter, served as a prison guard, and rode flatboats on the Mississippi and Sangamon Rivers. Thomas work was various as he felled trees, plowed fields, and attended church when he could. However there is no evidence that he ever set foot in a schoolhouse.
When Thomas was twenty-eight, he ventured into Elizabethtown and, by chance, laid eyes on Nancy Hanks, the young daughter of a Kentucky farmer. They fell in love and married, on June 12th, 1806. At thirty-one years old, Thomas had acquired the farm for a $200 promissory note to Sinking Springs Farm in Kentucky in the months before his son Abe was born. Thomas hastily built a one-room cabin on his new land for his family. However the land proved to be mostly heavily woodland and y, making it poor for farming.
Two years later, a dispute arose over the deed to the land, and Thomas had to move his family ten miles north, to the smaller, more fertile Knob Creek Farm. A year later Nancy Lincoln gave birth to Thomas Lincoln Jr., who she named after his father. The elder Thomas looked to the day when he would have two able-bodied boys to share the work with. But those dreams were short-lived as the baby died just shy of a month. The elder Thomas built a small coffin and buried his son near the cabin where the family lived.
In the ensuing years Knob Creek became a place where weary travelers on the Old Cumberland Trail could spend the night. sundown. The Lincolns never asked their overnight guests for payment, though most made contributions, either in money or, more often, in goods such as grain, sugar, and tobacco.
In 1816, another land dispute brought an end to the Lincolns’ time at Knob Creek. Rather than face a costly legal battle, Thomas uprooted his family for the second time, leading them west across the Ohio River and into Indiana. The decision to leave Kentucky was both a practical and moral one, as there was plenty of cheap land to be had and with Thomas an abolitionist, and Indiana was a free territory. There in Indiana, Thomas simply helped himself to a 160-acre plot of land in a heavily wooded settlement known as Little Pigeon Creek, near present-day Gentryville.
Personality[]
Thomas was an illiterate, indolent man who could only barely sign his name until instructed by his mother. Despite better soil on his new land, and the possibly of making a comfortable living selling corn and grain to nearby settlers, Thomas plowed less than an acre of land. This was due to having not a scrap of ambition in him or interest in bettering his circumstances, or in providing for his family beyond the barest necessities. Thus he never planted a single row more than was needed to keep his family's bellies from aching, or sought a single penny more than was needed to keep the simplest clothes on their backs.
Though Thomas was not "driven", he was a reliable character, if not bountiful, provider who would never abandoned his family in times of desperate hardship and grief, or abandoned the frontier for the comforts of city life. Thomas was also a masterful story teller, and seemingly limitless reserve of stories, thrilling tales of the early settlers, the Revolutionary War, humorous anecdotes and allegories, and true (or partly true) stories from his own wandering days. Said talent would be inherited by his son Abe.
With his relationship with his son Abe, while Thomas didn’t always understand or approve of his son’s pursuits, he always permitted them (eventually). As a Baptist, Thomas Lincoln had been raised to believe that slavery was a sin and this aspect of the man was one of the few lasting contributions he would make to his son’s character.
Physical Appearance[]
Role in the film[]
In 1818 in Pigeon Creek, Thomas Lincoln worked at the docks of Jack Barts river dock. His son Abraham Lincoln who was working with his father at the dock spotted his friend Will Johnson and his older brother being dragged by Barts men to be slaves despite being free men. Abe attempted to help Will, but was stopped by his father urging him to look away as it wasn't there place to intervene. Despite his warning, Abe ignored him and choose to take an axe and charge at the slavers for lashing Will with a whip. Abe was easily disarmed and was thrown to the ground next to Will by the slave driver who then proceeded to whip Abe and Will. Nancy Lincoln seeing this pleaded to Thomas to save them, which he complied, punching the slaver from his son and knocking him into the water.
Jack Barts soon appeared demanding to know if Thomas injured his man, though Thomas defended his actions as not only was he protecting his son, but that Will and his family were not slaves and Barts knew it. Barts then promptly fired Thomas and demanded that the carpenter immediately pay him back the debt he had been working off to pay with interest. This angered Thomas who approached the businessman, only to be stopped by the other man's cane. He gave his own warning that if the debtor collected any more money from him it would be in the form of a fist. Upon that threat, Barts revealed that the cane had a hidden pistol which he aimed at Nancy. However Barts allowed the family and Will to leave, telling Thomas that there were other ways to collect a debt.
Short after that incident, Thomas's wife Nancy becomes ill and dies. At her burial Abe attempted to tell his father he had seen Barts break into their house and attack Nancy, but Thomas in his grief begged Abe not to speak it and also not to do anything foolish. Abe kept his promise with his father not to seek revenge. Nine years later Thomas died, and relieved Abe of his promise setting him on the path to becoming a vampire hunter.