Lincoln did not compose the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope. No one really knows whether the store clerk Lincoln walked six miles to return 3 cents he overcharged. And his wife wasn't a Confederate spy.

Now this small town in Western North Carolina is pressing its own claim: Lincoln was a Tar Heel.

According to a tale that locals swear is true: The 16th president of the United States wasn't born in Kentucky, as commonly thought, but in Bostic to a young, unwed mother.

This month, Bostic officially opened its Lincoln Center, an old, city-owned train depot refurbished with $20,000 raised through contributions.

Inside the center, the fresh white walls feature a photo quilt that tells the North Carolina birth story. There are panels that show the Concord Baptist Church, where Lincoln's mother is said to have been a member, as well as a community meeting in the 1920s that took place on Lincoln Hill. The picture shows a few dozen people standing near a pile of rocks, the remains of the cabin where Lincoln is said to have been born.

"We're trying to put together the only way these people had of preserving these truths -- to tell them," said Keith Price, president of the Bostic Lincoln Center.

Despite the Bostic tale solidifying into bricks and mortar, Lincoln scholars say it has no substance.

"This is a lot of hokum," said Allen Guelzo, director of the Civil War era studies program at Gettysburg College.

Organizers of the Lincoln Center acknowledge that the pieces of the birth story don't fit neatly together. One problem is that various versions name three different fathers.

The center's storyboards cite a long-legged businessman named Abraham Enloe as one of the possible fathers. They also speculate about John C. Calhoun, the powerful South Carolina politician who served as vice president. And there's a local man named Richard Martin.

To untangle the paternal confusion, the folks behind the center are taking up a petition to press the federal government for a DNA test.

It could prove the Bostic story. Well, one of them, at least.

'The truthful traditions'

Price refers to the Bostic story as "the truthful traditions in this area," and dismisses the history-book version as "some supposed beginning in Kentucky."

A retired contractor with a friendly, conversational nature, Price sums up the community's story like this:

Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks, was born in Virginia and moved to her uncle's home in Gaston County before being "bound out for raising" at age 8 or 10. She was sent to the Enloe family of Rutherford County because her mother could not care for her.

Hanks became pregnant as a teenager. The father could have been Abraham Enloe, the head of the household in which she was reared, Martin or Calhoun (based on the story that Enloe took Nancy to visit South Carolina relatives).

She gave birth in the cabin outside Bostic around 1804. She later moved to Kentucky and married Tom Lincoln, the man Abraham assumed was his father.

The illegitimate birth, coupled with Lincoln's Republican politics, gave his family, and the Democrats in the area, reasons to cover up the story, Price said.

Bostic's Lincoln supporters draw much of their energy from a couple of old books. One of them, "The Genesis of Lincoln," was originally published in 1899. Author James Cathey made his case by collecting stories from people who remembered Nancy and her baby. In addition, there are people living today who remember Nancy Hanks' name on the church rolls of Concord Baptist Church. The records burned in a fire.

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