Abraham Lincoln and Kentucky

Abraham Lincoln was born at his fathers Sinking Spring Farm, near Hodgenville, KY  on February 12, 1809. Thomas and Nancy Lincoln had settled there just two months prior to their son’s birth.

The Lincolns stayed on the 348 acre farm until moving just a few miles away in Knob Creek. The area was establish as an “Early 19th Century Kentucky Cabin” by Congress on July 17th 1916, symbolic of the one in which Lincoln was born and is today preserved as Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site.

The Site is on 116.5 acres, about one third the site of the original farm. On the site is a Beaux-Arts classical granite and marble memorial building containing the traditional Lincoln birth place. Lincolns Birthplace and his boyhood home in Knob Creek are now preserved landmarks.  Lincoln’s log cabin formative years served him well throughout his life, and in politics. Known as a self-made man, honest, and hardworking. The image of the towering man, helped him reach towering heights in American History.

Legal problems with former owners the Farm in Kentucky caused the Lincolns to pull up roots when Abe was seven. The Lincolns left Kentucky in and moved to Indiana in 1816. Soon after Abe’s mother died, from milk sickness, and his father married a woman from Elizabethtown. Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln was Abraham Lincoln’s stepmother. She was born in Hardin County Kentucky and knew Thomas Lincoln from Elizabethtown.

She married a man named Daniel Johnston. Not successful and often in debt, Mr. Johnston took a job as the Hardin County Jailer. The job included one corner of the jail for the family quarters. Sarah cooked for the inmates and cleaned the jail, and was by most accounts quite unhappy. Her husband died in 1916, and she and Thomas Lincoln were married in 1819, the second marriage for both. She was a good stepmother and loved Abe very much.

Lincoln’s domestic policies as president and all political levels, reflect his formative years in Kentucky. He supported domestic policies such as the Homestead Act which allowed poor people to move west to homestead for ownership of land, possibly remembering his formative years in Kentucky.

Author Ron Stemple
Copyright 2006, Ron Dowell

For Additional Information
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace
Lincoln Museum
LaRue County Chamber Of Commerce
Larue County/Hodgenville, KY