Kat Smutz - Abraham Lincoln - History in an Hour

The death of the senior Abraham Lincoln was the event that sent the Lincolns even deeper into debt. Abraham’s wife, Mary Lincoln, was now a widow with five children to care for. She was forced to sell most of their land, a reported 1,700 acres. As was the tradition in those days, what little was left went to Mordecai, the eldest son. That left Thomas Lincoln with little more to take out into the world than his own two hands. He put them to good use, learning the carpentry trade.

Thomas Herring Lincoln

Thomas Lincoln was working in a carpentry shop in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, when he met the owner’s niece, Nancy Hanks. Nancy was the daughter of Lucy Hanks and had been born in a part of West Virginia which, at the time, was still a part of the state of Virginia. Family histories claim that Nancy’s mother was Lucy Shipley, and that she was never married to Nancy’s father, who is reported to have been a man named James Hanks.

Young Nancy lived first with her grandparents, Joseph and Ann Hanks, until her grandfather’s death. She lived with her mother for a time after Lucy’s marriage to a man named Henry Sparrow, then with Lucy’s sister, Elizabeth, who had married Henry’s brother, Thomas. At some point, she went to live in the home of Richard Berry, working as a seamstress. This is where Thomas Lincoln is said to have proposed.

Nancy was 23 when she married Thomas Lincoln and the couple moved into a home in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. It was there that a daughter, Sarah, was born. Little is known of Sarah Lincoln’s life. It would, no doubt, have been similar to her brother’s. She looked after her brother and a cousin, Dennis Hanks, between the time of her mother’s death and her father’s second marriage. In August 1826, Sarah married Aaron Grigsby, but her married life was brief. She died after only one year, on 20 January 1828, in childbirth.

Some time after Sarah’s birth and before Abraham’s, Thomas Lincoln decided his growing family needed a larger home. They moved to a farm about three miles from Hodgenville, Kentucky. Thomas was said to be an easy-going man without ambition, that he did work, but only as much as was needed to support the basic needs of his family. The rocky ground of the farm, which had been purchased on credit, failed to yield enough to support the family, and their financial situation worsened.

It was at this farm that Abraham Lincoln was born on 12 February 1809. Like most children of families in the American wilderness at that time, the home he lived in was a log cabin. Their life was so isolated the family was hardly aware that the war of 1812 with Britain had taken place. Days, for families like the Lincolns, were spent trying to scrape enough from the land to survive. The passage of time was marked by the change of seasons, when it was time for spring planting, summers spent doing work outside, fall harvesting and dormant winters spent working inside. Sundays were a day of rest for Christian families, even when there was no church nearby.

The loss of his younger brother, the move to Indiana, the death of his mother and the arrival of a stepmother were all typical of wilderness families in Lincoln’s time. Aside from his thirst for books, there was nothing to indicate that young Abraham Lincoln would ever be more than a country farm boy.

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