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The Kentucky log cabin in which Lincoln was born on February 12th, 1809

For a few months he attended log-cabin schools with his sister Sarah, but he learned little more than his letters. It is amazing to think that this man, whose Gettysburg address is accepted as one of the noblest classics of English literature, did not have much more than six months of schooling in his whole life.

In 1816 Thomas Lincoln decided to move from Kentucky to Indiana. He built a raft, loaded it with a kit of carpenter’s tools and four hundred gallons of whiskey, and, depending on his rifle for food, floated down into the Ohio River in search of a new home. Having picked out a place in the Indiana forest, he walked home and, with a borrowed wagon and two horses, he took his wife and children into the wilderness, actually cutting a way through the woods for them.

Near Little Pigeon Creek the carpenter and his wife, assisted by young Abraham, now seven years old, built a shed of logs and poles, partly open to the weather, and here the family lived for a year. Meanwhile a patch of land was cleared, corn was planted, and as soon as a log-cabin, without windows, could be built, the Lincolns moved into it.