Sherry Chandler » Happy 200th
Happy 200th
Abraham Lincoln was born 200 years ago today on Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky, though his family had moved to Indiana by the time he was seven. There’s a national park on the site now and big doins planned, including a kickoff ceremony today featuring Laura Bush. (But the year began officially last night when Sam Waterston performed Lincoln in Louisville).
The weather is not auspicious. I don’t know what it’s like in Hodgenville but here we have about 3 inches of snow topped with ice and it is currently pouring down rain. Young tomcat Bertie has asked me to open the door for him three times and all three times he has screeched to a stop on the doorsill. Still, ever the optomist, he wants me to open the door again.
When the weather is better, the park has some nice walking trails.
Oops! Winter Storm Forces Cancellation of Lincoln Bicentenniel Event
The park’s website has a history of the farm, beginning like this:
1783 William Greene received a land grant of 30,000 acres from the Commonwealth of Virginia. The land was part of what is now Jefferson County, Kentucky but would become part of Hardin County, Kentucky in 1792. The deed for the land grant was signed by Patrick Henry. One-half of the 30,000 acres was bought by Joseph James, which was then purchased by Richard Mather, a land speculator from New York.
1805 David Vance bought 300 acres from Mather, who held a lien on the land. Vance then sold the farm to Isaac Bush.
1808 Thomas Lincoln purchased 300 acres of land from Bush. However, none of the three paid the debt to Mather.
1809 Abraham Lincoln was born February 12 on the Sinking Spring Farm.
1811 Thomas Lincoln moves the family to Knob Creek because of title problems with the Sinking Spring Farm.
1813 Mather filed suit against Vance, Bush and Lincoln to collect the debt owed on the farm. Vance had disappeared, so Bush and Lincoln answered the bill. Lincoln tried to pay Mather the money owed him but Mather wanted the land back.
1816 Mather won the suit and got his land back.
I find this simple statement of facts a poignant reminder of how difficult life was for the Lincoln family. The story is not untypical. It’s fleshed out a bit, though with slightly different facts, by the Courier-Journal.
Lincoln’s connection to the commonwealth began when his grandfather, Capt. Abraham Lincoln, moved to the wilderness in 1782. He was killed by American Indians in a raid two years later while farming with his children, about 20 miles east of Louisville.
Lincoln’s parents, Thomas and Nancy Lincoln, moved to Kentucky’s more populated Washington County (later renamed LaRue County) in the winter of 1808, paying $200 for 348 rocky acres on Nolin Creek, called Sinking Springs farm. Just two months later, Lincoln was born in a 16- by 18-foot, dirt-floor cabin.
By the time Lincoln was 2, his father was caught up in a legal dispute over the farm and had to move the family to 30 rented acres off Knob Creek, located on the turnpike between Louisville and Nashville. About 10 families lived in the area.
“My earliest recollection … is of the Knob Creek place,” Lincoln wrote in an 1860 letter.
And another view, and another set of names, this one from Carl Sandburg, from Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years:
In May and the blossom-time of 1808, Thomas and Nancy with the baby [the older sister, Sarah] moved from Elizabethtown to the farm of George Brownfield, where Tom did carpenter and farm work. Near their cabin wild crab-apple trees stood thick and flourishing with riots of bloom and odor. And the smell of wild crab-apple blossom, and the low crying of all wild things, came keen that summer to Nancy Hanks. The summer stars that year shook out pain and warning, strange and bittersweet laughters, for Nancy Hanks.
For information about bicentenniel events planned in Kentucky, you can visit the official state site.
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3 Comments
1. Tommy replies at 12th February 2008, 9:38 am :
Lucky folks, you, three inches of snow while it’s sunny and chilly down here.
The ice I sympathize with. I guess you aren’t budging for a while. Is it as bad as 2003?
Oh, and some people have strange ideas about the state of the nation. Scroll over Ben Stein’s face to make him scared!
The term Whiskey Tango Foxtrot was coined for sites like this one.
Via. Blogflog by proxy!
2. sherry replies at 12th February 2008, 10:19 am :
Good grief, Tommy! I don’t see Darwin day anywhere in my calendar. Mine says Lincoln’s birthday.
3. Tommy replies at 12th February 2008, 2:01 pm :
Via Pharyngula, I see that there’s a web site, but how many American adults are more aware of it than of Lincoln’s birthday, do you think?
It’s just more their steeling me culture!! paranoia, I think.
Oh, it’s still sunny in patches, but the wind has picked up and clouds are rolling in.
Have you thawed out any?
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