Abraham Lincoln was born
on February 12, 1809 near Hodgensville Kentucky, and lived there
until 1816 when the Lincoln family moved to Spencer county Indiana.
There Thomas Lincoln, Abe's father, staked out a claim for his farm
near Little Pigeon Creek and the town of Gentryville. It was there
that the 16th President of the United States spent his
formative years and would develop the physical strength that became
legend, working as a ferryman, farmer, day laborer, flatboat man and
as a carpenter, the trade of his father, and one that he never really
cared for. His strength was attested to by a neighbor when the man
related that Abe could “Sink his ax deeper in the wood than any man
I ever saw.” On other occasions it is reported by neighbors that
Abe once single handedly moved an old farmers chicken coop by
carrying it on his back, and he carried a heavy log that three men
could not lift. These may be parables intended to show Lincoln was a
man of great physical strength.
He would come to love the
written word during his years there and set out to read anything he
could get his hands on from the Holy Bible to Shakespeare and
everything in between. It was the book “The Life of Washington”
that goes down in history as one of the memorable incidents in young
Lincolns life. The book belonged to a neighbor, Josiah Crawford. Abe
had borrowed the book and after reading it one night he placed it on
a shelf in the loft where he slept, near at hand so he could begin
reading again come morning. Unfortunately a storm blew through the
area that night and drove rain through a crack between the logs of
the cabin, soaking the book thoroughly. Abe would have to work the
debt off by working for twenty-five cents a day for three days to
cover the cost of the book which Crawford estimated at seventy-five
cents.
His mother Nancy would
begin his schooling and taught him the basics of reading, writing and
“ciphering to the rule of three”. His stepmother, Sarah Bush
Johnston Lincoln would continue his education and encouraged young
Abe as he studied his books. By Lincolns own admission his formal
education was sorely lacking and amounted to less than a year in
Kentucky and Indiana combined.Thomas Lincoln would finally pull Abe
out of school, considering the time consumed in the walk to and from
the schoolhouse a waste and it could be better used on the farm.
Lincolns interest in the
law also began while in Indiana. One of the books he had borrowed was
“The Revised Statutes of Indiana” and he would often walk to
either Boonville, in neighboring Warrick county, or to Rockport in
southern Spencer county to attend court. These trips would surely
lead him toward the path he would eventually take in Illinois, and
also influence his gift of oratory as he watched and listened to the
lawyers at their work. He would often “mount a stump” and preach
a sermon or give a political speech that likely as not would get him
in trouble with his father. It seemed that every time Abe would take
off on a speech during the work day the other hands would stop
working and listen. It is also said that if there was no audience,
Abe would speak to the trees which provided him with a suitable
substitute.
Abraham Lincoln would
leave Indiana in the spring of 1830 at the age of twenty-one, the
last time he would move with his father Thomas as a part of his clan.
He would leave behind the graves of his mother Nancy Hanks Lincoln,
who died of the “milk
sickness” in 1818 and
sister Sarah Lincoln Grigsby, who died in childbirth along with the
child January 20, 1828. From then on he would make his own way and
grow to become the man the world knows today, built upon the
foundation laid in that small community of Gentryville between the
forks of Little Pigeon Creek.
These are mere gleanings
from the memories of people that lived near the Lincoln during his
time on the Little Pigeon. Some of them are no doubt true as verified
in later conversations with his closest acquaintances. It is
believable that he would become a favorite among the men gathering at
Jones' store where his gift of gab was well received and polished,
and it would serve him well in later years. Topics would run the
gamut from religion to slavery and politics, or just plain coarse
humor. The memories of those who contributed these fragments were no
doubt dimmed by the distance of years or perhaps clouded by hopes of
fame to be reflected back to themselves. They were in the most part
taken from interviews of the remaining citizen of Gentryville who
knew (or claimed to know) the Lincoln's 35 years after they had
removed to Illinois. Sadly the world was never afforded the
opportunity to receive the whole, unadulterated story from the man
himself. That opportunity was lost when the assassins bullet struck
but given what we do know of the man he would have almost certainly
penned his memoirs and the natural storyteller in him would have
given the ages one corker of a story!
Bibliography,
Sources
1- Abraham
Lincoln: A History, Volume One, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, 1886
2- Herndon's
Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, Volume 1 William H. Herndon, Jesse W.
Wiek, 1888, 1921
3- The Life of
Abraham Lincoln, Ward Hill Lamon, Chauncey F. Black, 1872
