"When Gideon [Lincecum] was seventeen years old and clerking in an Indian trading post in Eatonton, Georgia, his employer, Ichabod Thompson, brought him from Savannah a black English violin as a Christmas present. It was the treasure of his life. Not being acquisitive of worldly goods, it was the only possession he cherished throughout his life.
It was at dawn on Christmas of 1810 when young Gideon answered a knock at his door and found the kindly Ichabod Thompson standing outside with the violin in his hands. Gideon, barefooted and in his night gown, stepped outside the door to accept the wonderful instrument, the dearest Christmas present of his life. He placed the violin against his shoulder and, disregarding the cold wind, played a Mississippi popular tune, Killiecrankie.
To commemorate this momentous occasion, every Christmas dawn thereafter, for sixty-three years, Gideon arose from bed wherever the day found him, and, as he was, in nightclothes and barefooted, played his Christmas tune three times." [Lois Wood Burkhalter, Gideon Lincecum, 1793-1874 (University of Texas Press, © 1965), 290 & 291.]
Merry Christmas from Lincecum Lineage!
