HARTFIELD, Va. (AP) _ Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, the last surviving descendant of Abraham Lincoln, died on Christmas Eve at the age of 81.

Beckwith, the great grandson of the 16th president, had lived in a nursing home in Saluda, according to officials of the funeral home where the body was taken. The community is about 45 miles from Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy.

Charles Bristow of the Bristow-Faulkner Funeral Home said he knew little about Beckwith, except that he was descended from the Civil War president.

He said Beckwith’s widow would make arrangements on Monday. Published records show he had been married three times but was childless.

Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd had four sons. Three died in their youth; the eldest, Robert Todd Lincoln, served as Secretary of War under President James A. Garfield and died in 1926 at the age of 82.

Robert Todd Lincoln and his wife, Mary, had three children; their youngest, Jessie, eloped in 1897 with Warren Beckwith, a classmate and football star at Iowa Wesleyan College.

They had two children: Mary Lincoln Beckwith, who died in 1975 and Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, who was born in Riuverside, Ill. on July 19, 1904.

The great-grandson received a law degree from what is now Georgetown University. He donated most of his famous forebear’s documents, artwork and furniture to the state of Illinois.