Abraham Lincoln’s DNA Was Never Found on His Assassination Chair. Why Does UsefulCharts Say It Was?

A president is assassinated. His blood stains a chair. More than a century later, scientists extract his DNA, identify a rare genetic signature, and solve a mystery about his mother.

It is a compelling story. It is also not what the evidence establishes.

In UsefulCharts’ Abraham Lincoln Family Tree, presenter Matt Baker tells viewers that DNA recovered from the chair Lincoln occupied when he was shot established the president's maternal ancestry. He then uses that supposed result to resolve a longstanding genealogical dispute.

There is one serious problem: the museum that owns Lincoln's assassination chair does not report recovering Lincoln's DNA from it.

The actual genetic research involved living relatives, competing family histories, and attempts to authenticate historical artifacts. Baker turns those separate investigations into something much simpler—and considerably more conclusive.

That distinction matters. A family tree can be persuasive without being proven. A genetic match can support a theory without identifying a historical individual. And a bloodstain, however famous the chair beneath it, is not a DNA result.

1. The Chair That Supposedly Solved a 150-Year Mystery

Abraham Lincoln was sitting in a rocking chair at Ford's Theatre in Washington when John Wilkes Booth shot him on April 14, 1865.

The chair survived. It eventually entered the collection of The Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

Baker's explanation of Lincoln's maternal ancestry reaches its decisive moment when he describes DNA taken from blood on that chair.

He tells viewers:

"a test of Abraham Lincoln's DNA taken from blood from the chair he was leaning on when he got shot"

According to Baker, that test identified mitochondrial haplogroup X1c, matching the genetic signature discovered among descendants of Lincoln's proposed maternal ancestors.

He concludes that one theory concerning the parentage of Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks, is almost certainly correct.

The problem is not the existence of the X1c research. That research is real.

The problem is the claimed source of Lincoln's DNA.

The Henry Ford's conservation records describe what actually happened to the chair.

Before conservation work in 1996, investigators examined stains on its upholstery. Most stains on the headrest were identified as hair oil.

Chemical testing also produced preliminary positive indications of blood in two locations: the chair's back and the front of its seat.

But a positive preliminary blood test cannot establish whose blood is present. The museum explicitly distinguishes those findings from conclusive DNA testing.

Its published account explains that additional testing would have required a suitable reference sample for comparison.

The museum's artifact documentation also states that further testing was not pursued because of the lack of available authenticated Lincoln blood and DNA samples.

There is no reported X1c result from this chair in those conservation records.

The chair was genuinely Lincoln's. The stains were genuinely investigated. The claimed DNA identification is where the story departs from the documented evidence. thehenryford.org

This is not a minor historical correction.

Baker presents physical evidence supposedly obtained directly from the president as the final confirmation of a disputed family relationship.

Without that result, viewers are left with something materially different: a genealogical conclusion supported by research into relatives, but not independently authenticated through Lincoln's own blood.

2. What the Researchers Actually Found

The real investigation into Nancy Hanks's ancestry is more interesting than the simplified version.

For generations, historians disputed parts of her family history.

One influential interpretation identified Nancy as the daughter of Lucy Hanks, who later married Henry Sparrow. A competing account placed the family within a different maternal ancestry involving the Shipleys.

The central genetic question was whether living descendants of these historical families inherited the same maternal DNA.

Mitochondrial DNA is particularly valuable for this work because mothers transmit it to their children. A continuous maternal line can therefore preserve a recognizable genetic signature across many generations.

But an important distinction follows.

Establishing that living relatives share a maternal ancestor is not the same as recovering DNA from Abraham Lincoln.

In October 2015, the Hanks DNA Project announced results from an investigation led by Suzanne Hallstrom and collaborating genealogists.

Researchers tested living descendants tracing their maternal ancestry through several Hanks and Sparrow family branches.

The results were substantial.

Descendants associated with Ann Lee and Lucy Hanks shared mitochondrial haplogroup X1c, along with more specific genetic characteristics.

A comparison group descended from the Shipley sisters Naomi and Rachel belonged instead to haplogroup H.

Those results provided strong evidence that Lucy Hanks belonged to the maternal family of Ann Lee rather than the proposed Shipley maternal line.

In November 2015, genetic genealogist Angie Bush explained the findings for the National Genealogical Society.

Her account identified the major breakthrough as establishing the maternal parentage of Lucy Hanks Sparrow.

That is narrower than claiming that scientists had authenticated Abraham Lincoln's own DNA and thereby independently established every relationship connecting him to Ann Lee.

The researchers had tested relatives. They had reconstructed family lines. They had compared those lines genetically.

They had not obtained the decisive DNA sample from Lincoln's assassination chair described in the video. FamilyTreeDNA

The distinction is fundamental.

A laboratory can establish that two tested individuals share a maternal genetic lineage.

But establishing the identity of an untested historical person within that lineage also requires documentary and genealogical evidence connecting that person to the tested family.

Lincoln's suspected maternal ancestry has substantial historical support. His former law partner William Herndon reported that Lincoln understood his mother to have been born outside marriage, and later historians investigated the relevant family relationships.

None of that requires inventing a blood test from Lincoln's chair.

The research deserved an accurate explanation.

Instead, Baker supplies a dramatic laboratory confirmation that the documented investigation did not produce.

3. Another DNA Investigation Had Already Failed to Authenticate Lincoln's Relics

There is a further complication.

The 2015 genealogical findings were not the first attempt to use mitochondrial DNA to investigate Lincoln's ancestry and assassination artifacts.

At the 25th International Symposium on Human Identification in 2014, forensic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick and three collaborators presented research titled The Search for an mtDNA Reference for Abraham Lincoln – Who Was Nancy Hanks?

Their investigation examined maternal relatives associated with competing candidates in Lincoln's family history.

They also compared those genetic signatures against mitochondrial DNA recovered from two assassination relics.

The results did not establish the relics as authentic sources of Lincoln's DNA.

The researchers found that the family groups they examined shared a maternal signature, leaving their particular candidate relationships unresolved by that comparison.

More importantly, neither tested relic produced a mitochondrial profile matching the relatives' profile.

The researchers considered historical contamination a likely explanation.

Their proposed next step was further sequencing of additional artifacts in the hope of identifying authentic Lincoln DNA.

They had not declared the mystery solved through a bloodstain. They were describing the difficulties of obtaining an authenticated genetic reference. promega.com

These were different investigations from the later Hanks DNA Project, and their conclusions must not be confused.

The 2014 work examined particular candidate maternal lines and attempted relic authentication.

The 2015 project produced stronger genealogical evidence distinguishing the Ann Lee maternal line from the Shipley alternative.

The later results did not retroactively authenticate the earlier relics—or establish that Lincoln's assassination chair had yielded his DNA.

This is precisely the distinction Baker needed to explain.

Instead, a difficult scientific investigation becomes a neat story with a convenient ending.

The historical truth is less tidy. It is also more valuable.

4. The Lincoln–Lee Relationship Shows What Proper Genetic Verification Looks Like

Baker raises another intriguing genealogical question.

Was Abraham Lincoln related to Confederate General Robert E. Lee?

His answer is no.

On the specific proposed Lee family connection, independent genealogical research substantially supports that conclusion.

But the evidence comes from a different kind of genetic investigation.

In 1929, respected Lincoln biographer William E. Barton proposed that Lincoln's ancestor William Lee descended from Colonel Richard Lee, an ancestor of the Confederate general.

The theory acquired credibility despite an important missing link: Barton could not establish William Lee's father.

Over subsequent decades, the suggested relationship appeared in additional genealogies.

Researchers eventually investigated the two families using historical documents and Y-chromosome DNA.

Unlike mitochondrial DNA, which follows maternal inheritance, Y-DNA can trace direct male lines.

The distinction matters because the proposed relationship depended on whether the two Lee families shared a particular paternal ancestor.

Genealogist Richard Hall examined the evidence in a 2021 article for American Ancestors.

Documented male-line descendants of Lincoln's Lee ancestors belonged to haplogroup R1b.

Comparable descendants of Colonel Richard Lee belonged to haplogroup I1a.

The results rejected the proposed common paternal lineage. They did not establish that the two historical figures could have had no distant relationship through any other ancestor.

This was a genuine example of DNA helping to resolve a specific genealogical claim. geneticlincoln.com

It also exposes what is missing from Baker's treatment of Lincoln's maternal ancestry.

Genetic evidence must be tied to the particular family relationship being tested.

A result for distant relatives does not automatically identify DNA from an untested ancestor. A result from an artifact does not automatically identify the person who used it.

And a genealogical hypothesis does not become a confirmed fact merely because a genetic finding is consistent with it.

The technology is powerful precisely because it can test claims.

It loses that value when the explanation outruns the test.

5. The Last Lincoln Heir: A Family Dispute Reduced to an Anecdote

The video's problems are not confined to genetic research.

Baker also examines the disappearance of Abraham Lincoln's direct descendants.

Only one of Lincoln's four sons, Robert Todd Lincoln, survived into adulthood. Robert's descendants eventually narrowed to a small number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

When Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith died in December 1985, he was generally regarded as the president's last confirmed direct descendant.

But there was an unresolved question involving a boy named Timothy.

Baker explains that Beckwith's second wife, Annemarie Hoffman, claimed Timothy was her husband's biological son.

Beckwith disputed paternity, having previously undergone a vasectomy.

The video adds that Beckwith helped raise Timothy.

That last detail is particularly difficult to reconcile with the historical reporting.

In a detailed 1994 investigation for The New Yorker, historian Michael Beschloss reconstructed the dispute using legal records, interviews with lawyers, and accounts of the family's affairs.

The reported sequence was considerably less affectionate.

Beckwith married Annemarie in November 1967.

When she became pregnant, he challenged his ability to be the father. His urologist examined him and reportedly found him sterile.

Beckwith subsequently pressed his pregnant wife to sign an agreement concerning paternity and inheritance.

According to the investigation, he expelled her from the family property.

Two months after Timothy's birth in 1968, Annemarie took the child to Europe, where mother and son spent the following seven years.

Later divorce proceedings became entangled with attempts to establish Timothy's parentage and protect his potential inheritance rights.

That is not evidence of Beckwith raising Timothy as his child. It describes a disputed marriage, separation, legal conflict, and an unresolved claim of fatherhood. The New Yorker

The financial stakes were also substantial.

The Mary Harlan Lincoln Testamentary Trust held assets accumulated through generations of the Lincoln family.

If Timothy were legally recognized as a descendant, he could potentially claim a share.

If no eligible Lincoln descendant remained, the trust principal was destined for three institutional beneficiaries: the American Red Cross, Iowa Wesleyan College, and the First Church of Christ, Scientist.

According to Beschloss, those institutions eventually arranged a settlement worth more than $1 million for Timothy.

The payment helped resolve potential claims against the trust.

It did not establish his biological parentage.

No conclusive genetic test resolved the dispute.

The video's basic qualification—that Timothy's paternity remains uncertain—is appropriate.

But its description of Beckwith helping raise the boy removes much of the documented conflict from the story.

It also leaves viewers with an incomplete understanding of why a million-dollar settlement occurred.

The money was not proof of a secret Lincoln descendant. It was part of resolving uncertainty over an inheritance.

That difference turns a family-tree curiosity into a more serious story about legal rights, contested parentage, and the disposition of a historical fortune.

6. A Black Family's Ancestry Becomes an Unsupported Slavery Theory

Near the end of the episode, Baker moves from documented Hollywood connections to a considerably weaker genealogical claim.

He discusses Camille Hanks Cosby, wife of Bill Cosby.

Baker identifies a possible ancestor named Thomas Hanks, who may have belonged to the wider family of Lincoln's maternal ancestors.

He then acknowledges that he cannot establish the proposed relationship because the supporting genealogical sources are inadequate.

That should have been the end of the claim.

Instead, Baker speculates about whether the proposed connection might involve a white slaveholder fathering a child with an enslaved Black woman.

His stated reason for considering that possibility includes Camille Cosby's race.

The history of sexual exploitation under American slavery is well documented. Such relationships certainly occurred.

But the existence of a historical pattern is not evidence that it explains a particular person's ancestry.

Baker offers no documented enslaver, no identified enslaved ancestor, no record of the proposed parentage, and no verified chain connecting Camille Cosby to Joseph Hanks.

He does acknowledge uncertainty and allows that slavery may have had nothing to do with the relationship.

That qualification matters. He does not claim to have proven the theory.

Still, the speculation adds a disturbing historical possibility without establishing that it belongs in this family's story.

It is particularly conspicuous because the video handles the better-supported celebrity relationships with much more specificity.

Tom Hanks's proposed connection is traced through named ancestors.

George Clooney's relationship was previously researched and publicly documented by Ancestry.com in 2012, which identified a common ancestor in Lucy Hanks.

The Camille Cosby discussion lacks an equivalent evidentiary foundation.

An unexplained surname connection is a legitimate research question.

Turning it into a possible story of racial exploitation without evidence connecting the people involved is something else. ancestry.com

7. The Problem With Making Genealogy Look Certain

UsefulCharts makes difficult family relationships understandable.

That is the strength of its format.

A viewer can follow generations of marriages, deaths, migrations, and disputed ancestry without getting lost in hundreds of names.

But a clear chart can conceal the difference between established relationships and proposed ones.

A line connecting two boxes looks identical whether it represents a documented parent-child relationship or a conclusion inferred from indirect evidence.

The narrator must supply the distinction.

Baker does acknowledge uncertainty in parts of the episode. He admits that the Camille Cosby connection is unverified and that Timothy's paternity remains unresolved.

Those qualifications make the treatment of Lincoln's DNA more frustrating.

The video demonstrates that its presenter understands the need to distinguish a possibility from an established fact.

Yet at the moment when that distinction matters most, he describes a direct genetic confirmation that the documented research does not establish.

The episode also contains a MyHeritage sponsorship promoting tools for building family trees.

That commercial relationship is disclosed, and there is no evidence it caused the DNA error or interfered with editorial decisions.

The relevant issue is simpler.

A genealogy channel encourages audiences to trust the relationships it explains. When it invokes scientific testing to resolve a historical mystery, viewers deserve to know exactly whose DNA was tested and how the conclusion was reached.

Those details are not technical distractions.

They are the evidence.

The Verdict: An Accurate Family Tree Needs More Than Convincing Lines

The most serious problem with Abraham Lincoln Family Tree is not its interest in obscure genealogy.

It is the presentation of an apparently definitive scientific finding without the test required to establish it.

The 2015 Hanks investigation provided meaningful evidence concerning Lincoln's maternal ancestry.

It identified a rare mitochondrial lineage among living descendants of relevant families.

It strengthened a historical interpretation already supported by generations of documentary research.

What it did not do was extract authenticated Abraham Lincoln DNA from his assassination chair.

A separate forensic investigation had reported difficulty authenticating assassination relics. The museum holding the actual chair reports preliminary blood testing, not the DNA confirmation Baker describes.

Meanwhile, the video's treatment of Timothy Beckwith omits important documented circumstances surrounding a disputed paternity claim and a multimillion-dollar inheritance.

These are not reasons to discard every relationship in the chart.

They are reasons to reject the confidence with which some of its most dramatic claims are delivered.

The danger in historical storytelling is not simply getting a name or date wrong.

It is teaching an audience to mistake a plausible reconstruction for a proven event.

Abraham Lincoln's family history contains genuine discoveries, unresolved questions, and remarkably persistent legends.

It deserves better than certainty borrowed from a test that was never reported on the chair.

References

1. Original work — Abraham Lincoln Family Tree, UsefulCharts, Matt Baker.
Watch the original episode
Primary source for Baker's claims about Lincoln's DNA, maternal ancestry, descendants, and celebrity relatives.

2. The Henry Ford — The Lincoln Chair, December 15, 2025.
Read the museum's explanation
The museum identifies preliminary blood testing on Lincoln's assassination chair but reports no conclusive DNA identification of the president.

3. The Henry Ford — Rocking Chair Used by Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater the Night of His Assassination.
Examine the artifact record
Documents the chair's provenance, conservation history, and the museum's decision not to pursue further genetic testing.

4. Colleen Fitzpatrick and colleagues — The Search for an mtDNA Reference for Abraham Lincoln – Who Was Nancy Hanks?, 25th International Symposium on Human Identification, 2014.
Read the research abstract
Reports that two tested assassination relics did not match the investigated maternal genetic profile and that the researchers had not authenticated Lincoln's DNA.

5. Hanks DNA Project — Nancy Hanks Lincoln mtDNA Study, October 21, 2015.
Read the original findings
Explains the mitochondrial DNA comparisons among living Hanks, Sparrow, and Shipley descendants and identifies haplogroups X1c and H.

6. Angie Bush — Abraham Lincoln and mtDNA, National Genealogical Society, November 9, 2015.
Read the genealogical assessment
Identifies the major genetic discovery as evidence establishing Lucy Hanks Sparrow's maternal ancestry.

7. Richard Hall — Testing a Theory: Were Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee Related?, American Ancestors, Winter 2021.
Read the genealogical investigation
Uses historical documents and Y-DNA comparisons to reject the proposed common paternal Lee ancestry.

8. Michael Beschloss — Last of the Lincolns, The New Yorker, February 21, 1994.
Read the investigation
Reconstructs the Beckwith paternity litigation, disputed medical evidence, family trust, and settlement exceeding $1 million.

9. Ancestry.com — Ancestry.com Reveals Actor George Clooney Is Related to Abraham Lincoln, November 1, 2012.
Read the genealogical announcement
Documents the proposed Lincoln–Clooney relationship through Lucy Hanks, providing a comparison with the unverified Camille Cosby connection.