October 20, 2020 - Abe Lincoln Birthplace
Since the Patton Museum wasn't open and neither was the nearby Makers Mark distillery, we had to kill some time. I noticed a spot called Abraham Lincoln's birthplace on the Kentucky map in the atlas so we headed there. The small town nearest the actual birthsite is named Hodgenville and has a small museum at town center so we stopped there first.
Now we are in the town center; is just to the right of the Abraham Lincoln statue.
The museum was very good with 12 life size dioramas of Lincoln's life like this one of his childhood. Lincoln was raised on the frontier primarily in Kentucky and Indiana, living in log cabins. Here he is engaged in his favorite pasttime: reading.
"After Lincoln had grown to adulthood and prospered as a lawyer and politician, he was reluctant to talk about what he called the 'stinted living' of his early year. When asked for a campaign biography he responded: "It can all be condensed into a simple sentence and that sentence you will find in Gray's Elegy -- 'The short and simple annals of the poor."
On March 4, 1865, Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address. In it, he deemed the war casualties to be God's will. Historian Mark Noll places the speech "among the small handful of semi-sacred texts by which Americans conceive their place in the world;" it is inscribed in the Lincoln Memorial. Lincoln said:
Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said, "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether". With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
Generals Lee and Grant meeting at Appomatix where Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia.
After the museum, we went over to the nearby Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Park.
In December 1808 Thomas and Nancy Lincoln -- Abraham Lincoln's parents -- bought Sinking Spring Farm, paying $200 for 300 acres. Thomas, Nancy, and their young daughter Sarah moved into a one-room log cabin built on a knoll near Sinking Spring. Their cabin was probably a typical frontier dwelling: about 18 by 16 feet, a dirt floor, one window, and one door, a small fireplace, a shingled roof, and a low chimney made of clay, straw and hardwood. On February 12, 1809 Abraham Lincoln, named after his grandfather, was born.
A Beaux-Arts neo-classical Memorial Building was designed by John Russell Pope for the birthplace site. On February 12, 1909, the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth, the cornerstone was laid by President Theodore Roosevelt and the building was dedicated on November 9, 1911, by President William Howard Taft. Almost a hundred years after Thomas Lincoln moved from Sinking Spring Farm, a similar log cabin was placed inside the Memorial Building. The Memorial Building features 16 windows, 16 rosettes on the ceiling, and 16 fence poles, representing Lincoln being the 16th president. The 56 steps leading up to the building entrance represent his age at his death.
The memorial and Sinking Spring Farm were established as a national park in 1916 and designated Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site in 1959.
A reconstructed log cabin typical to the area is inside the monument. It is smaller than the original so it would fit in the monument. We were not able to check out the inside of it.
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We toured the visitor center, then went on a short hike around the grounds.
We passed by the site of the Boundary Oak. Oak trees often served as boundary markers and survey points for determining property lines because they could live well beyond 200 years. The Boundary Oak, thought to be 25 to 30 years old at the time of Lincoln's birth, was located less than 150 yards from the cabin where he was born. Until its death in 1976 , the great white oak remained the last living link to Abraham Lincoln.
The Sinking Spring still exists and is in the grove of trees to the right.
Lincoln and his family were only at Sinking Springs for his first two years and not surprisingly he had no memories of it. He grew up on the Knob Creek farm a few miles away. We drove over there but it was closed. So we ended up checking out a nearby Civil War Museum of the Western Theater.
Lincoln's earliest memories were of the Knob Creek Farm, 10 miles northeast of the Sinking Spring Farm. It has been a non-contiguous section of the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park since 2001.
The total acreage of Knob Creek Farm is 228 acres , of which the Lincolns lived on 30 acres. Lincoln's father, Thomas Lincoln, leased the land by the Old Cumberland Trail (now U.S. 31E) in hopes of regaining the Sinking Spring Farm, where Lincoln was born. At the Knob Creek home, Lincoln's brother, Thomas, was born and died. Lincoln himself almost died at the farm as well, nearly drowning in the nearby creek until neighbor and friend Austin Gollaher extended a branch to rescue him from the swollen waters. In December 1816, when Lincoln was almost eight years old, he moved with his family to a homestead in Indiana, which is now preserved as the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial.
The cabin the Lincolns lived in was later moved and re-purposed by Austin Gollaher. Gollaher took down the old home and used the logs to build a horse stable about a mile down the road. Years later, the stable was washed away by a flood.
The Gollaher Cabin was built around the year 1800, and moved to its present location to reflect what the Lincoln cabin would look like. It is the cabin Austin Gollaher's family lived in during Lincoln's stay at Knob Creek Farm
Picture from Wikipedia, taken by C. Bedford Crenshaw.
