Showing posts with label Bicentennial Birthdays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bicentennial Birthdays. Show all posts

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Four Bicentennial Birthdays

What is the significance of the bicentennial birthdays of Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Darwin , Felix Mendelssohn, and Abraham Lincoln in 2009?

Darwin and Lincoln were both born on February 12, 1809; Mendelssohn, on February 3, 1809, and Poe, on January 19, 1809.

From the Classics Literature Library comes this:

Edgar Allan Poe's ancestry on his father's side has been traced to Samuel Lincoln, a weaver who emigrated from Hingham, England, to Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1637. The president's forebears were pioneers who moved west with the expanding frontier from Massachusetts to Berks County, Pennsylvania, and then to Virginia. Abraham Lincoln's father, Thomas Lincoln, was born in Rockingham County in backcountry Virginia in 1778. In 1781 Thomas Lincoln's father, who was also named Abraham, took his family to Hughes Station on the Green River, 32 km (20 mi) east of Louisville, Kentucky. In 1786 a Native American killed the first Edgar Allan Poe while he was at work clearing land for a farm in the forest.