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I was born Feb. 12, 1809 in Hardin County. Kentucky my parents were both born in Virginia. My mother who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks. My father at the death of his father was but six years of age, and he grew up, Literally without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now spencer county, Indiana, in my eight year, we reached our new home about the time the state came into the union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals, still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools so called, there was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education of course when I came of age I did not know much still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the rule of three but that was all. The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity. On this rocky farm, a little over a hundred years ago when Kentucky was the home of the woodsman and the pioneer, when the scant soil yielded reluctant harvest to the settler. Thomas Lincoln, one-time supervisor of county roads, and his wife, Nancy Hanks, came from Elizabethtown and built out of rough logs a cabin. In that cabin on the 12th day of February. 1809, was born thier son, Abraham Lincoln. |
