Dear Readers,

In July 2020, when I began telling Nancy Kendall's story in a blog on Grandfather's Gift, I had no idea what lay ahead. Her story, while important, seemed easily told. I couldn't see the blog lasting more than a few months at most.

Imagine my surprise to still be publishing posts on Grandfather's Gift a year and a half later. What I didn't realize then was how so many of the topics in her journal still resound today.

People of color are still fighting for a level playing field. Jim Crow attitudes are still alive and well. Politicians still try to push through voting laws that keep people of color, the poor, and others from having a say in their own futures.

When Nancy Kendall wrote down some of her memories from the Underground Railroad days, I think she knew it was a memorable period in history. She wanted her stories told, so she shared them with my grandfather, who then shared them with me.

Nancy Kendall's journal is a gift from which we can learn from our past, and work toward a more equitable future. It is a gift I treasure, and that I'm honored to share.

Thank you all for coming along on this journey with me.

~ Nancy Jean

Few of us look at a photo or drawing of Abraham Lincoln without seeing the sorrow and sadness in his eyes. I've often thought you could drown in those eyes. 

In historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's TED Talk, "Lessons from Past Presidents," Goodwin points out that so many years after his presidency and the turmoil of the Civil War, we think of Lincoln as a deeply wounded, melancholy man who suffered unimaginable loss. 

I think most of us have experienced a type of grief, and even guilt for feeling happy when so much suffering goes on in the world. I know I have.

Sometimes, grief and sorrow become the catalyst for action. My great-great-grandmother, Nancy Kendall, used her sorrow over slavery to help fugitive slaves escape. Most of us don't fall into a hole and hide when we're sad. Not for long, anyway. That sorrow is not our complete essence, but a part of who we are as people. And, it wasn't Abraham Lincoln's complete essence, either. 

Often forgotten when we look into those eyes, is the humor, affability and wit that was Abraham Lincoln. He was a storyteller. And, he was a great one.

Undoubtedly, much of the charm is lost in simply reading Lincoln's yarns. What's missing is the way he told them. He was animated and laughed as he told his tales. Listeners were captivated.

Not a storyteller in the traditional sense, Lincoln wasn't apt to just sit and "tell a story." Instead, says Doris Kearns Goodwin, in her book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln '"Lincoln’s form of storytelling demonstrated his “extraordinary ability to convey practical wisdom in the form of humorous tales his listeners could remember and repeat.”' 
​

The Gutenberg Project's "Lincoln's Yarns and Stories," by Alexander K. McClure, is available free online. It's a vast collection of stories, witticisms, humor, and illustrations that give us a different side of the sad, sorrowful man we think we know. 

​Perhaps it's time to look at Lincoln's eyes and see beyond the sorrow. 

* From the story, Getting Rid of an Elephant, related by Charles A. Dana, 1819-1897, Assistant Secretary of War.