Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 November 1892 — LincoIn's Goose Neat Home. [ARTICLE]

LincoIn's Goose Neat Home.

Near the graveyard where Lincoln’s father and stepmother rest, seven miles south of Charleston, 111., in a place then known as Goose Nest, the Lincolns made their final settlement on removing from Indiana. Here Abraham Lincoln assisted bis father in “getting settled.” as tney called it He helped him build a log cabin, and cleared for him a patch of ground, and when he saw him “under headway” in the new country, bade him good-by and started north afoot He found employment not far from Springfield, 111., where the active part of his early life was spent Though he'did not linger long in the Goose Nest cabin, he was there long enough to stamp his individuality on every heart for miles around, and many are the stories told of his sojourn among these people. It was my lot to be born and-reared a few miles from the early home of the Lincolns, and the incidents 1 shall relate were picked up in conversation with the old settlers about our neighborhood, all of waom knew Lincoln well. I was shown a bridge he help to build, and many other relics of his boyhood days. One very old man told me that he once rode up to Thomas Lincoln’s cabin and inquired it he could spend the night there. He was informed that the house afforded only two beds, and one of these belonged to a son who was then at home; but if he could get the consent of this boy to take him in as a bedfellow, he could stay. The stranger dismounted, and soon found the six-foot boy in the back yard, lying on a board reading. The boy consented, and the man slept with him that night. The boy was Abraham Lincoln, and the other never tires of telling how he spent the night with.the future President.— The Century.