The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln | Page 6

was all he could do to git his
fambly enough to eat and to kiver 'em. Nancy was turrible ashamed o'
the way they lived, but she knowed Tom was doin' his best, an' she
wa'n't the pesterin' kind. She was purty as a pictur' an' smart as you'd
find 'em anywhere. She could read an' write. The Hankses was some
smarter'n the Lincolns. Tom thought a heap o' Nancy, an' he was as
good to her as he knowed how. He didn't drink or swear or play cyards
or fight, an' them was drinkin', cussin', quarrelsome days. Tom was
popylar, an' he could lick a bully if he had to. He jist couldn't git ahead,
somehow."
"NANCY'S BOY BABY"
Evidently Elizabethtown failed to furnish Thomas Lincoln a living
wage from carpentering, for he moved with his young wife and his
baby girl to a farm on Nolen Creek, fourteen miles away. The chief
attraction of the so-called farm was a fine spring of water bubbling up
in the shade of a small grove. From this spring the place came to be
known as "Rock Spring Farm." It was a barren spot and the cabin on it
was a rude and primitive sort of home for a carpenter and joiner to
occupy. It contained but a single room, with only one window and one
door. There was a wide fireplace in the big chimney which was built
outside. But that rude hut became the home of "the greatest American."
Abraham Lincoln was born to poverty and privation, but he was never a
pauper. His hardships were those of many other pioneers, the wealthiest
of whom suffered greater privations than the poorest laboring man has
to endure to-day.
After his nomination to the presidency, Mr. Lincoln gave to Mr. Hicks,
a portrait painter, this memorandum of his birth:
"I was born February 12, 1809, in then Hardin County, Kentucky, at a
point within the now county of Larue, a mile or a mile and a half from

where Hodgen's mill now is. My parents being dead, and my memory
not serving, I know no means of identifying the precise locality. It was
on Nolen Creek.
"A. LINCOLN. "JUNE 14, 1860."
The exact spot was identified after his death, and the house was found
standing many years later. The logs were removed to Chicago, for the
World's Columbian Exposition, in 1893, and the cabin was
reconstructed and exhibited there and elsewhere in the United States.
The materials were taken back to their original site, and a fine marble
structure now encloses the precious relics of the birthplace of "the first
American," as Lowell calls Lincoln in his great "Commemoration
Ode."
Cousin Dennis Hanks gives the following quaint description of
"Nancy's boy baby," as reported by Mrs. Eleanor Atkinson in her little
book on "Lincoln's Boyhood."
"Tom an' Nancy lived on a farm about two miles from us, when Abe
was born. I ricollect Tom comin' over to our house one cold mornin' in
Feb'uary an' sayin' kind o' slow, 'Nancy's got a boy baby.'
"Mother got flustered an' hurried up 'er work to go over to look after
the little feller, but I didn't have nothin' to wait fur, so I cut an' run the
hull two mile to see my new cousin.
"You bet I was tickled to death. Babies wasn't as common as
blackberries in the woods o' Kaintucky. Mother come over an' washed
him an' put a yaller flannel petticoat on him, an' cooked some dried
berries with wild honey fur Nancy, an' slicked things up an' went home.
An' that's all the nuss'n either of 'em got.
"I rolled up in a b'ar skin an' slep' by the fireplace that night, so's I
could see the little feller when he cried an' Tom had to get up an' tend
to him. Nancy let me hold him purty soon. Folks often ask me if Abe
was a good lookin' baby. Well, now, he looked just like any other baby,
at fust--like red cherry pulp squeezed dry. An' he didn't improve none

as he growed older. Abe never was much fur looks. I ricollect how Tom
joked about Abe's long legs when he was toddlin' round the cabin. He
growed out o' his clothes faster'n Nancy could make 'em.
"But he was mighty good comp'ny, solemn as a papoose, but interested
in everything. An' he always did have fits o' cuttin' up. I've seen him
when he was a little feller, settin' on a stool, starin' at a visitor. All of a
sudden he'd bu'st out laughin' fit to kill. If he told us what he was
laughin' at, half the time we couldn't see no joke.
"Abe never give Nancy no trouble after he could walk excep' to keep
him in