Читать книгу The Wonderful Story of Lincoln - C. M. Stevens - Страница 10

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Thomas Lincoln became a home-seeking wanderer soon after the death of his father. According to the laws of that time, all the property went to the eldest, and it may be supposed that little attention was paid in that rough destitute life to the raising of Thomas. He grew up simply “a wandering, laboring boy,” whose hard circumstances left little ambition or hope in him. But, in the course of all wondrous events and time, he became a carpenter, well respected, and married his cousin, the niece of the man in whose shop he worked. This niece was Nancy Hanks, daughter of Joseph Hanks, who had married Nannie Shipley, a Quaker girl. From all authentic accounts that can be gathered concerning Nancy Hanks, she was one of God’s great women.

This much at least is sufficiently verified that she was a strong, handsome girl, noted for her religious zeal, and was one of the most sought-for singers at the marvellous camp-meetings of those days. That the marriage of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks was regarded as an important community event is the testimony of several who were present, for every social enjoyment known to the times was there, and the occasion was celebrated with unusual demonstrations of good will.

The wedding took place June 12, 1806, and the documents of the marriage show that she had enough property left her by her father to require a guardian appointed by the court. The uncle with whom she lived was her guardian, appointed on the death of her parents when she was nine years old.

Documents in existence also show that Thomas Lincoln owned a large tract of land, that he held responsible public position, and was well respected in his community. The stories of shiftlessness and shame so long told as truth must be cast out as among the curiosities of envious gossip, sometimes accepted even by those it injures as true history.

A year after the marriage of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks their first child was born, a girl, which they named Nancy. Twelve years later, after the death of her mother and the marriage of her father to Sarah Bush Johnson, this daughter renamed herself Sarah, by which name she was known until her death at the age of twenty.

Sarah was born at Elizabethtown, Kentucky, but soon after the family moved to a farm, bought several years before by Thomas Lincoln, about fourteen miles away. There on February 12, 1809, was born one of the greatest of all Americans, Abraham Lincoln.

The Lincoln home was so rude that descriptions of it, in comparison with present poverty-stricken homes, sounds like distressful destitution, but it was the home of frontiersmen in pioneer days. All testimony agrees that no one suffered and that the boy grew strong and manly, in the abiding favor of friends, and in the noble aspirations of a superior destiny.

When Abraham Lincoln was seven years old and his sister Sarah was near nine, his father desired to seek a better home, which the pioneer always dreamed of as farther on. He built a flatboat in a creek half a mile from his house, put his household goods upon it, and floated down the Rolling Fork on a voyage of discovery to Salt River, and down Salt River to the Ohio. At Thompson’s Ferry on the Indiana shore he landed, stored his goods, and went back after his family, which he brought through on horseback.