NORWAY – Many people are aware that President Abraham Lincoln’s first vice president lived on Paris Hill, and some may know about a Stoneham man who stood in the honor guard at Lincoln’s funeral.

But how many are aware that two other Oxford County men were eyewitnesses to the start of Lincoln’s political career and his final moments?

“I don’t think many people know,” said Norway Selectman Bill Damon, an avid history buff.

Damon stumbled across the references in “Biographical Review,” a book published in 1897 by the Biographical Review Publishing Co. in Boston.

Hannibal Hamlin, the 15th vice president of the United States from 1861 to 1865 under President Abraham Lincoln and the first Republican vice president, is a well-known name in the Paris area, where he was born in 1809. His magnificent home still stands at the top of Paris Hill overlooking the White Mountains.

Although it is not well documented why Hamlin was dropped from the ticket during the 1864 election in favor of Andrew Johnson, his tie-breaking vote in the Senate as vice president against the administration’s proposal to send black slaves in the District of Columbia back to Africa as a partial means to resolve the slavery issue, and his identification with Radical Republicans may have been the reason, according to the editors of the “Biographical Review.” Instead of becoming president of the United States after Lincoln’s assassination, Hamlin returned to the Senate and died in Bangor in 1891.

Sgt. William Warren Durgin of Stoneham provides another fairly-well-known link to the president.

“I think a lot of people know about the man down in Stoneham,” said Damon of the Civil War veteran who was in Washington at the time of President Lincoln’s assassination and took an active part in the events that followed.

He was born in Stoneham in 1839 and went to work in farming and lumbering when he was 17. At the age of 22, he answered the call to arms and enlisted in the First Maine Infantry, Company G, was wounded in the ankle, and retired in the Veteran Reserve Force in Washington.

When Lincoln was assassinated, according to the “Biographical Review,” Durgin was one of the military bearers who escorted the body to the Capitol Rotunda and a member of the guard of honor that accompanied the president’s remains to Springfield, Ill. He became the proud possessor of one of only 29 medals in the U.S. and the only one presented to a Mainer to commemorate that service.

Durgin is also noted as being one of the guards who surrounded a house containing the assassination conspirators, including John Wilkes Booth, the man who shot Lincoln.

Damon said many people may not know that Oxford Hills had at least two other connections to Lincoln.

George Oliver Robinson, a retired lawyer and wealthy real estate owner who resided in Oxford during the summer, was born in 1821 in Oxford when it included Hebron. According to the “Biographical Review,” he came from a well-known family. Robinson attended Hebron Academy and later Lewiston Falls and North Yarmouth academies. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1849. He taught at Topsham Academy and was principal at the classical department at North Yarmouth Academy.

He then began the study of law and was admitted to the Cumberland County bar in 1854 and immediately went west to Bloomington, Ill. It was there the “Great Emancipator” and Robinson would cross paths during the birth of the new Republican Party.

At the state convention Lincoln made the speech that historians say severed his ties with the Whig Party and took him to the top of the new Republican Party. The words he spoke were called “Lincoln’s Lost Speech,” because all the reporters there were allegedly so taken by his eloquence they forgot to take notes.

The “Biographical Review” wrote of the occasion: “One man in the audience, however, a young lawyer and a personal friend of Mr. Lincoln’s kept his head sufficiently to obtain a fairly accurate report of the speech; and it has been published for the first time in McClure’s Magazine for September 1896. Mr. Robinson was one of those present at the thrilling scene when Lincoln, erect, tall, and majestic in appearance, hurled thunderbolts at the foes of freedom, while the great convention roared its endorsement.”

For more than 30 years, Robinson practiced law in Illinois, and it was said he rendered valuable political aid to the Republican Party, according to the “Biographical Review.”

Another local man with connections to Lincoln was Dr. Octavius K. Yates, a well-known Oxford County physician and surgeon and one of the oldest medical practitioners in West Paris. He attended various schools in Greenwood and the vicinity and graduated from Bethel High School. The “Biographical Review” stated Yates became interested in medicine when he went to board with a doctor in Bethel. When war broke out and Lincoln made his first call for 75,000 recruits to serve for three months, Yates was one of the first to enlist in the Auburn Artillery.

Yates was appointed a recruiting officer and detective. He served until the close of the war. While on duty in Washington, he was present at Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865, and was an eyewitness to the assassination.

After the war, Yates sold real estate and finally raised enough money to enter the medical field. He graduated from Maine Medical School at Bowdoin College in 1870 and moved to West Paris where he worked as a physician for many decades.