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Lincoln's Early Years
Marshall Threw "The things I want to know are in books. My best friend is the man that will give me a book that I have not read," once said Abraham Lincoln. He was born on February 12, 1809, in a small log cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky. Tom, Abe's father, ran two miles to tell their nearest neighbors, the Sparrows, the news of his newly born son. The neighbors then ran to the Lincoln home where they comforted Nancy, and they washed the baby and got him ready for Nancy to hold. During all of this commotion Dennis Hanks asked, "What are you going to name him, Nancy?" She replied with "Abraham," after Hanks's grandfather. When Abe was two, the Lincoln family moved to Knob Creek, Kentucky. Abe went everywhere with his father. Abe watched his dad very closely and soon started to do some chores by himself. Abe hunted game, fished, and trapped to get food and furs for his family. The children worked very hard on the farm, but one day Nancy told them to get on some good clothes because they were going someplace special. A new, one-room, schoolhouse had just been built two miles away. This is where Abe and Sarah, his sister, would first learn their ABC's. This type of school was known as a blab school because the students recited their lessons out loud. They did not go to school very much because they had to help with the chores on the farm. Tom did not believe in education, but Nancy thought that the children should go to school all the time so they would be able to read and write. The Lincoln farm was close to a very famous road leading west. Sometimes travelers stopped at the Lincoln home to eat or to rest and talk. Every time someone stopped Abe hid and listened to their stories. Because of all of the interesting stories he heard he wanted to read about them in books. There were not very many libraries at the time; hence, Abe sometimes walked for miles and miles to get a book that he had not read. When Abe was seven years old, Tom and the owner of the Lincolns' farm had trouble deciding on the rent of the farm. After Tom had talked the problem over with his family he decided the family would move across the Ohio River and buy some land where the government was selling the land for two dollars an acre. Tom decided to take off on the
hundred-mile journey. Once Tom had arrived he decided on a 160-acre lot next to Little Pigeon Creek. He paid for the land and rested at a friend's house for a day; then he returned to his family's log cabin. When he arrived Abe, Nancy, and Sarah were waiting for him. They were all packed and the next day they started to where their new home was to be. They said their final goodbyes to the Sparrows and to Dennis Hanks, and the Lincolns said that they would save them a spot next to their new home. Since the Lincolns were very poor they did not have many possessions to take. The two horses they owned carried them and their bedding, clothing, and pots. At night it got very cold and the whole family huddled together around a campfire to try to stay warm through the night. On the way to their new home they had to travel through the forests. Abe, though very young, was big and strong enough to swing an ax to help his dad clear a passage for the wagon they obtained on the way. Abe and his father had to make a temporary shelter for the family to sleep. They got that job finished; then they started collecting timber for the permanent log cabin. The next winter the Sparrows and Dennis Hanks moved next door to the Lincolns. Also that winter a deadly disease called "milk-disease" was prevalent. It killed livestock and also Tom and Betsy Sparrow got it. The closest doctor was thirty-five miles away and there was no cure for it. One day they both got really sick and they died. Tragedy struck again when Nancy Lincoln also succumbed to the disease. After she died, Tom, Abe, and Dennis made her a coffin, and they performed a simple little ceremony in her remembrance. They buried Nancy Lincoln underneath one of the planks in their new log cabin. After Nancy had died, Sarah tried to do all of the work that her mother had done before, but she just could not do it. Sometimes when Sarah was really lonely she would just sit down by the fireplace and cry. Tom knew that the children needed a mother very badly. He went back to Elizabethtown, where he grew up. He had heard that his old girlfriend, Sarah Bush Johnston, was now a widow. He wished very strongly that she would marry him, and she did. She arrived at the log cabin with a wagonload of things that the Lincoln children had not seen before. All the children, especially Abe, loved her from the very start. She loved them all very much in return. She encouraged Abe to read and go to school. She also let Abe stay up late at night to read. After a few weeks, the Lincolns were like a new family. Abraham Lincoln was set for life with his new mother. Abraham Lincoln had a very rough and tragic childhood. But all his experiences as a child helped him to become a great man and one of the best leaders of our country.—[From Katie Smith Billings-lea, Abraham Lincoln; Keith Brandt, Abraham Lincoln the Young Years; Olivia Coolidge, The Apprenticeship of Abraham Lincoln; Manuel Komruff, Abraham Lincoln; Lloyd Ostendorf, Abraham Lincoln—The Boy, The Man; John Rhodehammel and Thomas F. Schwartz, The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America.]
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