It was in the spring of 1830 that “Abe” Lincoln, “wearing a jean jacket,
shrunken buckskin trousers, a coonskin cap, and driving an ox-team,”
became a citizen of Illinois. He was physically and mentally equipped
for pioneer work. His first desire was to obtain a new and decent suit
of clothes, but, as he had no money, he was glad to arrange with Nancy
Miller to make him a pair of trousers, he to split four hundred fence
rails for each yard of cloth--fourteen hundred rails in all. “Abe” got
the clothes after awhile.
It was three miles from his father’s cabin to her wood-lot, where he
made the forest ring with the sound of his ax. “Abe” had helped his
father plow fifteen acres of land, and split enough rails to fence it,
and he then helped to plow fifty acres for another settler.