In response to letter from Jesse Lincoln, Tennessee relative, Lincoln writes long letter relating family history. "As you have supposed, I am the grandson of your uncle Abraham; and the story of his death by the Indians, and of Uncle Mordecai, then fourteen years old, killing one of the Indians, is the legend more strongly than all others imprinted upon my mind and memory." Abraham Lincoln to Jesse Lincoln, 1 April 1854, CW, 2:217-18.