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Abraham Lincoln

A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN



1809
On the stormy morning of Sunday, February 12, Nancy Hanks Lincoln , wife of Thomas , gave birth to a boy. He was born on a bed of poles covered with corn husks. The baby was named Abraham after his grandfather. The birth took place in the Lincolns' rough-hewn cabin on Nolin Creek near Hodgenville, Kentucky. Thomas Lincoln was an uneducated carpenter and a farmer. Nancy Lincoln had little or no schooling and could not write.


1811-1812

In 1811 the Lincolns moved to a farm on Knob Creek which was also near Hodgenville. In 1811 or 1812 (possibly as late as 1815) Abraham's younger brother, Thomas, died in infancy.
1815
Abraham spent a short amount of time in a log schoolhouse. He began to learn his ABC's from a teacher named Zachariah Riney. He attended school with his sister, Sarah. Sarah had dark hair and gray eyes, and she was two years older than Abraham. Abraham attended school dressed in a raccoon cap, buckskin clothes, and pants so short that several inches of his calves were exposed. At home young Abraham heard the scriptures read from the family Bible.
1816
Young Lincoln was saved from drowning by playmate Austin Gollaher. Abraham and Sarah briefly attended school taught by Caleb Hazel, a neighbor. Late in the year the Lincoln family moved to southern Indiana and settled near present-day Gentryville. A cabin was constructed near Little Pigeon Creek. It measured 16 X 18 feet, and it had one window.
1818
Abraham's mother, Nancy, passed away on October 5th. She died of 'milk sickness,' a disease contracted by drinking milk from cows which have grazed on poisonous white snakeroot. In later years, Abraham would recall helping to carve pegs for his mother's coffin. Thomas Lincoln hauled the coffin, which was made of green pine, on a sled to the top of a thickly wooded hill and buried her without a formal funeral service. In Lexington, Kentucky, Mary AnnTodd, Abraham's future wife, was born on...