Kentucky Pioneer document dated 1811, summons for William Daly, Polly Daly, William Morgan, & Ben Harris - to appear before the Justices of Hardin County [Elizabethtown] Kentucky. They are to appear as witnesses on behalf of William G. Peirce plaintiff; the defendant was William Bush, brother of Sarah who was Abraham Lincoln's step-mother, therefore William Bush was Abe's uncle by marriage. This document was written and signed by the noted Kentucky pioneer, Ben Helm. Also signed by Robert Bleakley on the verso.BEN HELM (b. Fairfax county, Va., May 8, 1767; son of Capt. Thomas Helm, apioneer settler of Kentucky, who moved from Virginia to the Falls of Ohio, in the fall of 1779. In 1801-03 Ben Helm erected the first brick house built there. He became a surveyor; was state senator, 1796-1800; clerk of the Hardin county courts, 1800-17; an officer with the rank of major in the war of 1812; filled various other offices of honor and trust in Kentucky: purchased the farm owned by Christopher Bush, father of Mrs. Sarah (Bush) Johnston Lincoln, step-mother of Abraham Lincoln, and was a partner in a general store with Duff Green [later, American statesman], conducting the business as Green & Helm. He died in Elizabethtown, 1858, nearly 91 years old.Apparently William Bush was somewhat of a troublemaker in the E-town area. He was born in 1763, and in 1828 he acquired the Knob Creek farm where the Lincolns had lived, before they left for Indiana. His sister, Sarah, became the step-mother of the future U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln. See the article THAT ROGUE, WILLIAM BUSH, by Blaine V. Houmes, the Iowa physician and collector of Lincolniana. This article appears in The MANUSCRIPT, Summer 2002. William Bush acquired land like his parents, and by 1817 had married and built an attractive brick house [Elizabethtown area], a sign of sure success. He served on jury duty with Thomas Lincoln, after of Abraham and acquired the Knob Creek farm where the Lincolns had lived, before they left for Indiana∞, and later Illinois. Although prosperous, he was frequently entangled in lawsuits. His reputation was guarded and he did not enjoy the respect og other members of the Bush family. Little is known of Lincolnís relationship with the Bush family. Lincoln claimed that his familyís ìremoval (to Indiana) was partly on account of slavery, but chiefly on account of the difficulty in land titles in Kentucky.î Thomas Lincoln was known to be anti-slavery, and as a young boy Abraham probably observed slaves being taken in chains to Southern markets, on the road beside his home. Carl Sandburg and other historians have not dwlt on the cantankerous nature of the Presidentís uncle by marriage,8 let alone the fact that there was a slave-trader in the family. We wish to give credit to Blaine Houmes for much of what appears in this description. See pictures of this article here.

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