Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 February 1898 — LINCOLN’S BIRTHPLACE. [ARTICLE]

LINCOLN’S BIRTHPLACE.

Poverty and Desolation Wafted on the Famous Baby. Abraham Lincoln, the great war President, was born In Larue (then Hardin) County, Kentucky, in a rude little log cabin, says St. Nicholas. This cabin has recently been restored and so far as possible made exactly as it was eighty-eight years ago, when a little baby boy was born to Thomas and Nancy Lincoln, or “Linkhorn,” as the name was then spelled —humble “settlers,” who had moved to the neighborhood from Washington County four years before. The few living people who remember Thomas Lincoln, the father, say that ha was a rather improvident man, not working long at any one thing. He was a hard worker, but was a poor manager, and the little family was often without more than the simplest necessaries of life. Thomas Lincoln cleared a few acres around his cabin and raised a small crop of corn and grain. Then he became a carpenter and tinker, working at such odd jobs as he could find among the pioneer neighbors. He was away at work at the time Abraham was born. The neighbors heard that Mrs. Lincoln was In the cabin all alone with the little baby and had little to cat except corn and potatoes. They at once visited the Lincoln cabin, taking such delicacies as their houses afforded. The father returned in a few days and the baby was named Abraham Lincoln, after his grandfather, •who had been killed by the Indians when Thomas Lincoln was a little boy.