These famous words originated with the good and lowly Abraham Lincoln:
“All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”
His affection for his mother was very strong, and long after her death
he would speak of her affectionately and tearfully. She was a woman five
feet five inches in height, slender of figure, pale of complexion, sad
of expression, and of a sensitive nature. Of a heroic nature, she yet
shrank from the rude life around her. About two years after her removal
from Kentucky to Indiana she died. “Abe” was then ten years old. She
was buried under a tree near the cabin home, where little “Abe” would
often betake himself and, sitting on her lonely grave, weep over his
irreparable loss.
Lincoln’s mother was buried in a green pine box made by his father.
Although a boy of ten years at that time, it was through his efforts that
a parson came all the way from Kentucky to Indiana three months later to
preach the sermon and conduct the service. The child could not rest in
peace till due honor had been done his dead mother.