The Boys Life of Abraham Lincoln | Page 4

grew up to be the father of President
Abraham Lincoln. After the murder of his father the fortunes of the
little family grew rapidly worse, and doubtless because of poverty, as
well as by reason of the marriage of his older brothers and sisters, their
home was broken up, and Thomas found himself, long before he was
grown, a wandering laboring boy. He lived for a time with an uncle as
his hired servant, and later he learned the trade of carpenter. He grew to
manhood entirely without education, and when he was twenty-eight
years old could neither read nor write. At that time he married Nancy
Hanks, a good-looking young woman of twenty-three, as poor as
himself, but so much better off as to learning that she was able to teach
her husband to sign his own name. Neither of them had any money, but
living cost little on the frontier in those days, and they felt that his trade
would suffice to earn all that they should need. Thomas took his bride
to a tiny house in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, where they lived for about
a year, and where a daughter was born to them.
Then they moved to a small farm thirteen miles from Elizabethtown,
which they bought on credit, the country being yet so new that there
were places to be had for mere promises to pay. Farms obtained on
such terms were usually of very poor quality, and this one of Thomas
Lincoln's was no exception to the rule. A cabin ready to be occupied
stood on it, however; and not far away, hidden in a pretty clump of
trees and bushes, was a fine spring of water, because of which the place
was known as Rock Spring Farm. In the cabin on this farm the future
President of the United States was born on February 12, 1809, and here

the first four years of his life were spent. Then the Lincolns moved to a
much bigger and better farm on Knob Creek, six miles from
Hodgensville, which Thomas Lincoln bought, again on credit, selling
the larger part of it soon afterward to another purchaser. Here they
remained until Abraham was seven years old.
About this early part of his childhood almost nothing is known. He
never talked of these days, even to his most intimate friends. To the
pioneer child a farm offered much that a town lot could not give
him--space; woods to roam in; Knob Creek with its running water and
its deep, quiet pools for a playfellow; berries to be hunted for in
summer and nuts in autumn; while all the year round birds and small
animals pattered across his path to people the solitude in place of
human companions. The boy had few comrades. He wandered about
playing his lonesome little games, and when these were finished
returned to the small and cheerless cabin. Once, when asked what he
remembered about the War of 1812 with Great Britain, he replied:
"Only this: I had been fishing one day and had caught a little fish,
which I was taking home. I met a soldier in the road, and having always
been told at home that we must be good to soldiers, I gave him my
fish." It is only a glimpse into his life, but it shows the solitary,
generous child and the patriotic household.
It was while living on this farm that Abraham and his sister Sarah first
began going to A-B-C schools. Their earliest teacher was Zachariah
Riney, who taught near the Lincoln cabin; the next was Caleb Hazel,
four miles away.
In spite of the tragedy that darkened his childhood, Thomas Lincoln
seems to have been a cheery, indolent, good-natured man. By means of
a little farming and occasional jobs at his trade, he managed to supply
his family with the absolutely necessary food and shelter, but he never
got on in the world. He found it much easier to gossip with his friends,
or to dream about rich new lands in the West, than to make a thrifty
living in the place where he happened to be. The blood of the pioneer
was in his veins too--the desire to move westward; and hearing glowing
accounts of the new territory of Indiana, he resolved to go and see it for
himself. His skill as a carpenter made this not only possible but
reasonably cheap, and in the fall of 1816 he built himself a little
flatboat, launched it half a mile from his cabin, at the mouth of Knob

Creek on the waters of the Rolling Fork, and floated on it down that
stream to Salt River, down Salt River to the Ohio, and down the Ohio
to a landing called Thompson's Ferry on the Indiana shore.
Sixteen miles out from