Governor Enoch Lincoln’s tomb in Capitol Park, Augusta (2001)
Enoch Lincoln
(1749-1829) was born in Hingham, Massachusetts on December 28, 1788. His father was Lieutenant Governor of that State from 1807 to 1808.
Enoch entered Harvard College in 1806 but withdrew in 1808. In 1821 he received an honorary Master of Arts from Bowdoin College.
On leaving Harvard, he studied law with his brother and was admitted to the bar in Massachusetts in 1811. He later moved to Fryeburg to practice law and, in his spare time, to study the history of the local Indian people.
Lincoln owned land along the Penobscot River where the town of Lincoln bears his name.
After serving as Assistant District U.S. Attorney, he was appointed in 1818 to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Congress caused by the resignation of Albion K. Parris. Lincoln, a Democrat, was reelected twice. Then in 1826 he was elected Governor, again reelected twice, but refused to run again in 1829.
He influenced the selection of Augusta as the permanent capital of the State and was active in advocating the State’s position in the continuing northeast boundary dispute.
Governor Enoch Lincoln’s tomb in Capitol Park, Augusta (2001)
Lincoln purchased a farm in Scarborough, intending to retire there. However, in ill health, he died in Augusta on October 8, 1829, shortly after delivering a speech on the occasion of laying the cornerstone for the new capitol building.
He was buried on the grounds of what is now Capitol Park. In 1842 a granite tomb was erected to hold his remains. Mysteriously, the tomb has been empty for many years with no record of what happened to its contents! See Enoch Lincoln Documents.
Additional resources
*Arndt, J. Chris. “Enoch Lincoln,” American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, Vol. 13, pp. 674-675.
Chase, Henry, ed. Representative Men of Maine.
*“Death of Governor Lincoln,” Eastern Argus, Portland, October 13, 1829.
Enoch Lincoln image from Wikipedia Commons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch_Lincoln [Public Domain] accessed February 2, 2019.
*“Gov. Enoch Lincoln,” Maine Historical and Genealogical Recorder, Bangor, 1886, pp. 139-143.
*“The Late Governor of Maine,” The Yankee; and Boston Literary Gazette, November, 1829, pp. 235-232.
*Robinson, William A. “Enoch Lincoln,” Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933, Vol. 11, pp. 261-262.
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*Cited in Friends of the Blaine House at http://blainehouse.org/governors(accessed April 25, 2011)