KENTUCKY PIONEER DOCUMENT dated 1799, Hardin County, Kentucky. Written and signed by Ben Helm at Elizabethtown, Hardin County, Kentucky. ; also a docket signature of [John] Rowan on the verso. Also on the back is the signature of Christopher Bush, however it was actually signed by Ben Helm, as Christopher Sr. was illiterate and always made his signature with an "X". Christopher Bush was the father of Sarah Bush who became Abraham Lincoln's mother after the death of Nancy Hanks Lincoln. Her brother was also named Christopher but he would have been about 9 or 10 years old when this document was signed.This court document, dated 1799, commands that the sheriff bring Peter Clacomb to court to answer a debt claim brought by Christopher Bush [Sr.], who became the step-grandfather of Abraham Lincoln. Size: approx. 6-1/4 x 7-1/2".John Rowan (1773-1843) was a 19th-century politician and jurist from the U.S. state of Kentucky. Rowan's family moved from Pennsylvania to the Kentucky frontier when he was young. From there, they moved to Bardstown, Kentucky, where Rowan studied law with former Kentucky Attorney General George Nicholas. He was a representative to the state constitutional convention of 1799, but his promising political career was almost derailed when he killed a man in a duel stemming from a drunken dispute during a game of cards. Although public sentiment was against him, a judge found insufficient evidence against him to convict him of murder. In 1802, Governor Christopher Greenup appointed Rowan Secretary of State, and he went on to serve in the Kentucky House of Representatives and the U.S. House of Representatives. Rowan's Federal Hill mansion is now part of My Old Kentucky Home State Park. According to tradition, Stephen Collins Foster, a relative of the Rowan family, was inspired to write his ballad My Old Kentucky Home after a visit to Rowan's Federal Hill mansion in 1852, but later historians have found no definitive proof that Foster ever visited the mansion at all. The mansion remained in the possession of Rowan's family until 1922, when his granddaughter, Madge (Rowan) Frost, sold it to the state of Kentucky to be preserved as a state shrine.

Excellent condition for an American 18th century document.