Jesse Head Homesite

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Historical Marker #1038 in Washington County identifies the location of the home of Jesse Head, who performed the marriage of Abraham Lincoln's parents.

The Reverend Jesse Head was born in 1768 in Frederick County, Maryland, migrating to Kentucky in the mid-1790s. He lived in and around Springfield, Kentucky, during the late 1790s and early 1800s, where he was elected president of the city's municipal Board of Trustees. In addition to these duties, he fulfilled his ecclesiastical duties and his work as a carpenter.

However, the Reverend Head is remembered for presiding over a marriage ceremony that took place on the Beech Fork in Washington County on June 12, 1806, in the house of Richard Berry. This was the marriage of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, the parents of President Abraham Lincoln.

A poem was prepared and read by Henry Cleveland Wood at the monument dedication at the grave of the Reverend Jesse Head on November 2, 1922, which in part stated:

That from this lowly union there would spring
A modern Moses to a captive race;
A just man, fashioned in heroic mould-
Of Hero's stuff-a fearless President-
Emancipator-yet a Martyr, too-
Abraham Lincoln-Man of Destiny.