Teen crashes car into Abraham Lincoln’s historic family home after swerving to avoid hitting squirrel

House served as home for seven generations of President Lincoln’s ancestors after being built in 1650

A teen driver crashed her car into Abraham Lincoln’s historic family home after swerving to avoid hitting a squirrel.

The house in Hingham, Massachusetts, south of Boston, was built in 1650 by the great-grandfather of President Lincoln.

The Samuel Lincoln House suffered heavy damages when the 19-year-old driver crashed through its walls on the morning of 15 July. The residents inside the house were not injured.

First responders found a 2014 Audi Q7 stuck in the house’s living room, with about half of the car entering the building, according to the Hingham Police Department.

The local fire department arrived at the scene at around 6.30am and the road was shut down for several hours as the street was cleared up.

The woman driving the car sustained minor injuries. Hingham Police said in a statement: “The driver said she swerved to avoid a squirrel in the road and drove off the right side of the road, over the sidewalk, and into the front of the house."

The department added that the 19-year-old was issued with a citation for failing to stay within marked lanes. They said she was sitting on the sidewalk as first responders arrived.

The owners of the house were asleep upstairs when the SUV slammed into their downstairs living room. They said they would repair the house and hire a team of experts to restore a sign that was knocked off in the crash, Zenger News reported.

Samuel Lincoln was one of only eight early English settlers to move to Hingham as he bought the land for the house in 1649. After being built in 1650, it served as the home for seven generations of President Lincoln’s ancestors.

The location was awarded its historic significance in 1930.

Samuel Lincoln was a well-known person in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and his descendants include other officeholders as well as the 16th president.

Some of those descended from Samuel Lincoln include Enoch Lincoln, who served as the governor of Maine from 1827 to 1829; Levi Lincoln Sr, who was the Attorney General under President Thomas Jefferson from 1801 to 1805; and his son Levi Lincoln Jr, who was the governor of Massachusetts from 1825 to 1834.

Mordecai Lincoln, Samuel Lincoln’s fourth son, became a distant uncle to President Abraham Lincoln, who was born in 1809 – 159 years after the house in Hingham was constructed.

Samuel Lincoln died in 1690. Abraham Lincoln’s cottage home in Springfield, Illinois became National Historic Site in 1972 and is maintained by the National Park Service.