Porcupine Gulch - Hannibal Hamlin

Greetings family and friends! I was surprised to learn that our first cousin, seven times removed, served as Vice President of the United States under Abraham Lincoln and became very close to becoming POTUS! Attached is the back story of our distant cousin Hannibal Hamlin ....Bill

Family History

HANNIBAL HAMLIN

Hannibal Hamlin is an unfamiliar name to most American’s except for a handful of history buffs that live in Bangor, Maine and are familiar with the bronze statue of our first cousin, seven times removed, that stands in a city park. Fate and timing came very close to making things things much, much different.

Wendy is great at patiently searching the internet and genealogy websites seeking interesting,historical and notable connections with our families past. One such connection, through our mothers grandmother Sophie Tucker on the Swinnock side of the family, was patriot and public servant Hannibal Hamlin from Maine. Hamlin worked the family farm, spent time as a surveyor, a typesetter in a printing office and as a teacher before studying law, passing the Bar and serving as a lawyer. He was elected to the Maine House of Representatives for five years and was speaker several times and chaired the Committee on Elections. In 1848 he was elected to the United States Senate as by an anti-slavery wing of the Democratic Party and where he served on many important committees and was reelected multiple times. Hamlin resigned in 1857 to become the Governor of Maine where he served until being elected to a higher office.

Our distant cousin, Hannibal Hamlin, was elected as the fifteenth Vice President of the United States from 1861 until 1865 serving a single term during Abraham Lincoln’s first term of President. Hamlin’s extensive experience as an influential senator was tapped by Lincoln for recommending suitable cabinet choices and was of value to the Republican administration by providing a political and geographical balance. However, with little to do and not particularly close to Lincoln, Hamlin enlisted as a private in Maine State Coastguard at the start of the Civil War while serving as vice President. Replaced by Andrew Johnson during Lincoln’s abbreviated second term that ended tragically in Ford’s Theater, Hamlin returned to the U.S. Senate in 1869 for two more terms as was appointed United States Minister to Spain for several years before devoting his remaining years of retirement to the family farm in Maine where his close brush with destiny began.

https://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/residents-visitors/cabinet-vice-presidents/cabinet-vice-presidents-hannibal-hamlin-1809-1891/index.html