Abraham was twenty-one years old when Thomas Lincoln decided to leave
Indiana in the spring of 1830. The reason Dennis Hanks gives for this
removal was a disease called the "milk-sick." Abraham Lincoln's
mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, and several of their relatives who had
followed them from Kentucky, had died of it. The cattle had been
carried off by it. Neither brute nor human life seemed to be safe. As
Dennis Hanks says: "This was reason enough (ain't it?) for leaving."
The place chosen for their new home was the Sangamon country in
central Illinois. It was a country of great renown in the West, the
name meaning "The land where there is plenty to eat." One of the
family--John Hanks, a cousin of Dennis--was already there, and sent
them inviting reports.
Gentryville saw young Lincoln depart with real regret, and his friends
gave him a score of rude proofs that he would not be forgotten. Our
representative in Indiana found that almost every family who
remembered the Lincolns retained some impression of their leaving.
"Neighbors seemed, in those days," she writes, "like relatives. The
entire Lincoln family stayed the last night before starting on their
journey with Mr. Gentry. He was loath to part with Lincoln, so
'accompanied the movers along the road a spell.' They stopped on a
hill which overlooks Buckthorn Valley, and looked their 'good-by' to
their old home and to the home of Sarah Lincoln Grigsby, to the grave
of the mother and wife, to all their neighbors and friends. Buckthorn
Valley held many dear recollections to the movers."
After they were gone James Gentry planted the cedar tree which now
marks the site of the Lincoln home.[A] "The folks who come lookin'
around have taken twigs until you can't reach any more very handy,"
those who point out the tree say.
[Footnote A: See November number of MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, page 502.]
[Illustration: GREEN B. TAYLOR.
Son of Mr. James Taylor, for whom Lincoln ran the ferry-boat at the
mouth of Anderson Creek. Mr. Taylor, now in his eighty-second year,
lives in South Dakota. He remembers Mr. Lincoln perfectly, and wrote
our Indiana correspondent that it was true that his father hired
Abraham Lincoln for one year, at six dollars a month, and that he was
"well pleased with the boy."]
[Illustration: THE HILL NEAR GENTRYVILLE FROM WHICH THE LINCOLNS TOOK
THEIR LAST LOOK AT THEIR INDIANA HOME.]
[Illustration: SAMUEL CRAWFORD.
Only living son of Josiah Crawford, who lent Lincoln the Weems's "Life
of Washington." To our representative in Indiana, who secured this
picture of Mr. Crawford, he said, when asked if he remembered the
Lincolns: "Oh, yes; I remember them, although I was not Abraham's age.
He was twelve years older than I. One day I ran in, calling out,
'Mother! mother! Aaron Grigsby is sparking Sally Lincoln; I saw him
kiss her!' Mother scolded me, and told me I must stop watching Sally,
or I wouldn't get to the wedding. [It will be remembered that Sally
Lincoln was 'help' in the Crawford family, and that she afterwards
married Aaron Grigsby.] Neighbors thought lots more of each other then
than now, and it seems like everybody liked the Lincolns. We were well
acquainted, for Mr. Thomas Lincoln was a good carpenter, and made the
cupboard, mantels, doors, and sashes in our old home that was burned
down."]
Lincoln himself felt keenly the parting from his friends, and he
certainly never forgot his years in the Hoosier State. One of the most
touching experiences he relates in all his published letters is his
emotion at visiting his old Indiana home fourteen years after he had
left it. So strongly was he moved by the scenes of his first conscious
sorrows, efforts, joys, ambitions, that he put into verse the feelings
they awakened.[A]
[Footnote A: Letter to ---- Johnston, April 18, 1846. "Abraham
Lincoln. Complete Works." Edited by John G. Nicolay and John Hay.
Volume I., pages 86, 87. The Century Co.]
[Illustration: JOHN E. ROLL.
Born in Green Village, New Jersey, June 4, 1814. He went to Illinois
in 1830, the same year that Mr. Lincoln went, settling in Sangamon
town, where he had relatives. It was here he met Lincoln, and made the
"pins" for the flatboat. Later Mr. Roll went to Springfield, where he
bought large quantities of land and built many houses. A quarter of
the city is now known as "Roll's addition." Mr. Roll was well
acquainted with Lincoln, and when the President left Springfield he
gave Mr. Roll his dog, Fido. Mr. Roll knew Stephen A. Douglas well,
and carries a watch which once belonged to the "Little Giant."]
While he never attempted to conceal the poverty and hardship of these
days, and would speak humorously of the "pretty pinching times" he
saw, he never regarded his life at this time as mean or pitiable.
Frequently he talked to his friends in later years of his boyhood, and
always with apparent pleasure. "Mr. Lincoln told this story" (of his
youth), says Leonard Swett, "as the story of a happy childhood. There
was nothing sad or pinched, and nothing of want, and no allusion to
want in any part of it. His own description of his youth was that of a
joyous, happy boyhood. It was told with mirth and glee, and
illustrated by pointed anecdote, often interrupted by his jocund
laugh."
And he was right. There was nothing ignoble or mean in this Indiana
pioneer life. It was rude, but it was only the rudeness which the
ambitious are willing to endure in order to push on to a better
condition than they otherwise could know. These people did not accept
their hardships apathetically. They did not regard them as permanent.
They were only the temporary deprivations necessary in order to
accomplish what they had come into the country to do. For this reason
they could endure hopefully all that was hard. It is worth notice,
too, that there was nothing belittling in their life, there was no
pauperism, no shirking. Each family provided for its own simple wants,
and had the conscious dignity which comes from being equal to a
situation.
[Illustration: SANGAMON TOWN IN 1831.
Drawn by J. McCan Davis with the aid of Mr. John E. Roll, a former
resident.]