(EDITOR’S NOTE: Today the Sun-Gazette offers the next installment in a weekly history series that tells the stories of those who came before us.)

Many historians consider him to be the greatest president of the United States and many view him as a “secular saint,” but what is rarely mentioned are the unusual connections that Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president, has with Lycoming County.

In his 1966 book, “Sweet Dreams: Tales of a River City,” James C. Humes detailed how one of the first settlers in the Williamsport area was William Winters, who established a farm on the east side of Lycoming Creek in 1778.

Winters’ first wife was Anne Boone, sister of the famous woodsman Daniel Boone.

“Their oldest daughter, Hannah, married Abraham Lincoln, the president’s grandfather,” Humes wrote. “This Lincoln, who was later killed by Indians (in Kentucky in 1786), once visited his father-in-law, William Winters, at the latter’s Williamsport farm.”

After Winters died, Humes said, his relatives sold his property to a man named John Rose in 1801. Rose would only have one child — a daughter named Isabella.

In 1829, she married a man named Robert Grier. Because Grier had an association with future President James Buchanan, he was appointed to the Supreme Court. During his time on the Supreme Court, a case involving a former slave named Dred Scott appeared before Grier in 1853.

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney persuaded Grier to come to “their side of the story,” Humes said. In a 7-2 decision, it was affirmed that Scott “was a chattel,” and the decision affected the slaves and their descendants, denying them citizenship and the rights of any other American.

However, Lincoln used the decision as a rallying point, claiming America was a bifractured nation and said it could not stand for much longer as half-free and half-slave. It was during the 1858 Republican Illinois state convention that he gave his famous “House Divided against Itself” speech that would galvanize the free states of the North — and also mobilize the pro-slavery states in the South.

The speech put Lincoln on the national map and, in 1860, helped him win the nomination for the presidency of the United States, which he would win later that year.

However, the county was not so supportive of Lincoln.

“(In 1860) Lycoming County did not vote for Lincoln,” Humes wrote. “Democratic in allegiance, the county still followed the leadership of its favorite son, William Packer.”

Packer, Humes said, was a former resident of Williamsport and a staunch Democrat. He was elected governor of Pennsylvania in 1857 and served until 1861. Before that, Packer was an editor of The Lycoming Gazette from 1827 to 1836.

Humes quoted an article from The Lycoming Gazette, criticizing a series of speeches Lincoln, then president-elect, gave in 1861. The article stated the speeches contained “neither statesmanship, tact or talent in them” and the substance of each was “only the twaddle that the merest pettifogger” would have been ashamed to hear. A pettifogger is a lawyer who many consider to be petty and underhanded.

The article went on to say citizens of the country “would be ashamed” to know the talks were “coming from him … which the nation should to know … who is soon to be its chief magistrate.”

Lincoln also made an addition to the currency that carries on today.

“When you look at your coins with the inscription ‘In God We Trust,’ know that a former president judge of the Lycoming County courts was responsible,” local writer Lou Hunsinger Jr. said in an article on a website for local archaeologist and writer, Robin Van Auken. “That judge’s name was James Pollock, whose career would span a broad canvas of public service.” Pollock would also become governor of Pennsylvania in 1854.

Hunsinger said Pollock and Lincoln had met each other while serving in Congress in the 1840s. During that time, “one of Pollock’s good friends was … Abraham Lincoln.”

In 1861, Lincoln appointed Pollock the director of the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia.

“In 1864, Pollock proposed that all U.S. coins bear the inscription, ‘In God We Trust,’ ” Hunsinger said. “The proposal met with favor from both Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and President Lincoln.”

“This is probably Pollock’s most enduring accomplishment,” Hunsinger said.

Yet, in 1865, with the bloody Civil War coming to an end and the recent surrender of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appotomax Courthouse, Virginia, opinions of “Honest Abe” had changed.

After Lincoln was shot by actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14 at Ford’s Theater, Lincoln was rushed to a nearby boarding house on Tenth Street and lingered into April 15, where he died at 7:22 a.m.

On Jan. 30, 1883, the Williamsport Sun-Gazette ran an article that reported a bill was passed that allowed “$12,000 to be appropriated for the purpose” of buying this house on Tenth Street and making it part of the “public grounds.”

By then, attitudes for the slain president had shifted in Lycoming County because Williamsport had two schools named for Abraham Lincoln.

On Jan. 2, 1901, a writer in the Sun-Gazette referred to one school as the “old Lincoln building” while the “new Lincoln school, which, with its structural defects, is far the best school house in Newberry.” In the Sept. 9, 1936, edition, the Sun-Gazette said the school “had the largest enrollment” of schools in the area “with 536 students.”

The building, at 2138 Lincoln St. in Williamsport, is now the home of the STEP Program, which works “to engage diverse individuals, families and communities in the pursuit of social and economic success.”