Snakeroot: Toy Story, Tom Hanks and Abraham Lincoln 


The indigenous plant was found established and growing in the garden site.

In the movie Toy Story, when Jessie the Cowgirl first meets Woody the Cowboy she exclaims: “Sweet mother
of Abraham Lincoln!” Tom Hanks, the actor who played the voice of Woody is a distant relative of Nancy
Hanks, Abraham Lincoln’s mother. These characters from very different time eras are all connected.
They are connected by the indigenous snakeroot plant.

Snakeroot received its early American name because the rhizomes were believed to cure snakebite. A belief
no longer held. However, it can be as poisonous and lethal as a snakebite and was for Abraham Lincoln’s
mother Nancy who died from the toxicity of the plant. She died of milk fever when Lincoln was nine years old.
Milk fever is the result of drinking milk from cows who have foraged on snakeroot. Nancy Hank’s cousin,
Dennis Hanks and his wife Sarah, and several other residents of Little Pigeon Creek died in October of 1818.
Horses, sheep and cattle can still be poisoned by snakeroot today. Pastures where the animals graze must
always be free of this plant.