ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S FATHER AND MOTHER
While Thomas Lincoln was living with a farmer and doing odd jobs of
carpentering, he met Nancy Hanks, a tall, slender woman, with dark skin,
dark brown hair and small, deep-set gray eyes. She had a full forehead,
a sharp, angular face and a sad expression. Yet her disposition was
generally cheerful. For her backwoods advantages she was considered well
educated. She read well and could write, too. It is stated that Nancy
Hanks taught Thomas Lincoln to write his own name. Thomas was
twenty-eight and Nancy twenty-three when their wedding day came.
Christopher Columbus Graham, when almost one hundred years old, gave
the following description of the marriage feast of the Lincoln bride
and groom:
"I am one of the two living men who can prove that Abraham Lincoln, or
Linkhorn, as the family was miscalled, was born in lawful wedlock, for I
saw Thomas Lincoln marry Nancy Hanks on the 12th day of June, 1806. I
was hunting roots for my medicine and just went to the wedding to get a
good supper and got it.
"Tom Lincoln was a carpenter, and a good one for those days, when a
cabin was built mainly with the ax, and not a nail or a bolt or hinge in
it, only leathers and pins to the doors, and no glass, except in watches
and spectacles and bottles. Tom had the best set of tools in what was
then and is now Washington County.
"Jesse Head, the good Methodist minister that married them, was also a
carpenter or cabinet maker by trade, and as he was then a neighbor, they
were good friends.
"While you pin me down to facts, I will say that I saw Nancy Hanks
Lincoln at her wedding, a fresh-looking girl, I should say over twenty.
Tom was a respectable mechanic and could choose, and she was treated
with respect.
"I was at the infare, too, given by John H. Parrott, her guardian, and
only girls with money had guardians appointed by the court. We had bear
meat; venison; wild turkey and ducks' eggs, wild and tame--so common
that you could buy them at two bits a bushel; maple sugar, swung on a
string, to bite off for coffee; syrup in big gourds, peach and honey; a
sheep that the two families barbecued whole over coals of wood burned in
a pit, and covered with green boughs to keep the juices in. Our table
was of the puncheons cut from solid logs, and the next day they were the
floor of the new cabin."
Thomas Lincoln took his bride to live in a little log cabin in a
Kentucky settlement--not a village or hardly a hamlet--called
Elizabethtown. He evidently thought this place would be less lonesome
for his wife, while he was away hunting and carpentering, than the
lonely farm he had purchased in Hardin County, about fourteen miles
away. There was so little carpentering or cabinet making to do that he
could make a better living by farming or hunting. Thomas was very fond
of shooting and as he was a fine marksman he could provide game for the
table, and other things which are considered luxuries to-day, such as
furs and skins needed for the primitive wearing apparel of the
pioneers. A daughter was born to the young couple at Elizabethtown, whom
they named Sarah.
Dennis Hanks, a cousin of Nancy, lived near the Lincolns in the early
days of their married life, and gave Mrs. Eleanor Atkinson this
description of their early life together:
"Looks didn't count them days, nohow. It was stren'th an' work an'
daredevil. A lazy man or a coward was jist pizen, an' a spindlin' feller
had to stay in the settlemints. The clearin's hadn't no use fur him. Tom
was strong, an' he wasn't lazy nor afeer'd o' nothin', but he was kind
o' shif'less--couldn't git nothin' ahead, an' didn't keer putickalar.
Lots o' them kind o' fellers in 'arly days, 'druther hunt and fish, an'
I reckon they had their use. They killed off the varmints an' made it
safe fur other fellers to go into the woods with an ax.
"When Nancy married Tom he was workin' in a carpenter shop. It wasn't
Tom's fault he couldn't make a livin' by his trade. Thar was sca'cely
any money in that kentry. Every man had to do his own tinkerin', an'
keep everlastin'ly at work to git enough to eat. So Tom tuk up some
land. It was mighty ornery land, but it was the best Tom could git,
when he hadn't much to trade fur it.
"Pore? We was all pore, them days, but the Lincolns was porer than
anybody. Choppin' trees an' grubbin' roots an' splittin' rails an'
huntin' an' trappin' didn't leave Tom no time. It 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 clothes. Most o' the time he went bar'foot. Ever wear a wet buckskin
glove? Them moccasins wasn't no putection ag'inst the wet. Birch bark
with hickory bark soles, strapped on over yarn socks, beat buckskin all
holler, fur snow. Abe'n me got purty handy contrivin' things that way.
An' Abe was right out in the woods about as soon's he was weaned,
fishin' in the creek, settin' traps fur rabbits an' muskrats, goin' on
coon-hunts with Tom an' me an' the dogs, follerin' up bees to find
bee-trees, an' drappin' corn fur his pappy. Mighty interestin' life fur
a boy, but thar was a good many chances he wouldn't live to grow up."
When little Abe was four years old his father and mother moved from Rock
Spring Farm to a better place on Knob Creek, a few miles to the
northeast of the farm where he was born.