The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln | Page 4

house, I hears Mother and 'Mord'
hollerin' to make me run faster and go to the door, for Mother had it
open jist wide enough to reach out an' snatch me in--when the third
Injun was stoopin' to grab me, but 'Mord' makes him bite the dust like
the others.
"My, but wasn't them Injuns mad! Some of 'em sneaked around behind
the house--they had to give 'Mord's' gun a wide berth to git there!--but

he could only protect the front--and was a-settin' fire to our cabin to
smoke us out or roast us alive, jist when the soldiers come with Josiah
from the fort and saved our lives. Then the Injuns made 'emselves
scurce--but they druv off the oxen and all our other stock.
"MORD" LINCOLN, INDIAN FIGHTER
"That was the breaking up of our family. None of us boys was old
enough to take Father's place, an' Mother she was afraid to live there
alone. Accordin' to the laws o' Virginia--Kentucky belonged to Virginia
then--the oldest son got all the proputty, so 'Mord' he gets it all. He was
welcome to it too, for he was the only one of us that could take care of
it. 'Mord' he wasn't satisfied with killin' a few Injuns that day to
revenge Father's death. He made a business of shootin' 'em on sight--a
reg'lar Injun stalker! He couldn't see that he was jist as savage as the
worst Injun, to murder 'em without waitin' to see whether Mr. Injun
was a friend or a foe.
"Oncet when I told 'im there was good an' bad red men like they wuz
good an' bad white men, he said I might jist as well say 'good devil' as
'good Injun!' He says 'the only good Injun's the dead Injun!'
"Well, the settlers must 'a' 'greed with 'Mord,' for they made him sheriff
o' the county--he was sech a good shot, too--an' they 'lected him to the
Legislatur' after Kentucky come in as a State. He stood high in the
county. Folks didn't mind his shootin' an' Injun or two, more or less,
when he got the chancet. They all looked on redskins like they was
catamounts an' other pesky varmints.
"Your grandmother Lincoln an' Josiah an' me moved over into
Washington County, but she had hard scrabblin' to git a livin'. Josiah he
stayed with her, an' between him an' 'Mord,' they helped her along, but
I had to git out and scratch for a livin'. From the time I was ten I was
hired out to work for my 'keep,' an' anything else I could git. I knocked
aroun' the country, doin' this, that an' t'other thing till I picked up
carpenterin' o' Joseph Hanks, a cousin o' mine, an' there I met his sister
Nancy, an' that's how she come to be your mother--an' 'bout how I
come to be your father, too!"

Little is known today of Mordecai Lincoln, and there would be less
interest in poor Thomas if he had not become the father of Abraham
Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States. Mordecai Lincoln
was a joker and humorist. One who knew him well said of him:
"He was a man of great drollery, and it would almost make you laugh
to look at him. I never saw but one other man whose quiet, droll look
excited in me the disposition to laugh, and that was 'Artemus Ward.'
"Mordecai was quite a story-teller, and in this Abe resembled his
'Uncle Mord,' as we called him. He was an honest man, as
tender-hearted as a woman, and to the last degree charitable and
benevolent.
"Abe Lincoln had a very high opinion of his uncle, and on one occasion
remarked, 'I have often said that Uncle Mord had run off with all the
talents of the family.'"
In a letter about his family history, just before he was nominated for the
presidency, Abraham Lincoln wrote:
"My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished
families--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother was of a
family of the name of Hanks. My paternal grandfather, Abraham
Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky
about 1781 or 2, where, a year or two later, he was killed by
Indians--not in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a
farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia
from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the
New England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite
than a similarity of Christian names in both families, such as Enoch,
Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like.
"My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age; and he
grew up, literally without education."
CHAPTER II

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S FATHER AND