OLD POST FORD ACROSS THE WABASH RIVER, WHERE THE LINCOLNS CROSSED FROM INDIANA TO ILLINOIS.
From a photograph made for this work. The route by which the Lincolns went into Illinois from Indiana has always been a question in dispute. Some of the acquaintances of the family still living in Indiana claim that they followed the line marked on our map (page [45]). Others say that they went from Gentryville to the Old Post Ford across the Wabash. The route on the map was drawn on the supposition that they would have taken the road by which they would have avoided the greatest number of watercourses. Information has come to us since the map was made which shows that they went by Vincennes. Mr. Jesse W. Weik says that Dennis Hanks, who was in the party, told him in 1886 that they went through Vincennes. Colonel Chapman of Charleston, the grandson of Sarah Bush Lincoln, told Mr. Weik that in February, 1861, when Mr. Lincoln visited his mother for the last time, he told him that the settlers passed through Vincennes, where they remained a day. There, Lincoln said, they saw a printing-press for the first time. At Palestine, on the Illinois side of the Wabash, he remembered seeing a large crowd around the United States Land Office, and a travelling juggler performing sleight-of-hand tricks. We also know that they entered Decatur from the south, near the present line of the Illinois Central. This Mr. Lincoln told Mr. H. C. Whitney.

CHAPTER VI.
AMUSEMENTS OF LINCOLN’S LIFE IN INDIANA.—HIS FIRST SORROWS.

If Abraham Lincoln’s early struggle for both livelihood and education was rough and hard, his life was not without amusements. At home the rude household was overflowing with life. There were Abraham and his sister, a step-brother and two step-sisters, and a cousin of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, Dennis Hanks, whom misfortune had made an inmate of the Lincoln home—quite enough to plan sports and mischief and keep time from growing dull. Thomas Lincoln and Dennis Hanks were both famous story-tellers, and the Lincolns spent many a cozy evening about their cabin fire, repeating the stories they knew.

GRAVE OF LINCOLN’S SISTER.
From a photograph taken for this work. Sarah, or Nancy, Lincoln was born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, in 1807. In 1826 she married Aaron Grigsby, and a year later died. She was buried not far from Gentryville, in what is now called “Old Pigeon Cemetery.” Her grave is marked by the rude stone directly over the star. The marble monument in the centre is that of her husband.

CORN-HUSK BROOMS AND MOPS.
Photographed for this work from the originals, in the United States National Museum at Washington. Corn-husks were used by the pioneers of the West to make brooms, brushes, mats, and horse-collars.

Of course the boys hunted. Not that Abraham ever became a true sportsman; indeed, he seems to have lacked the genuine sporting instinct. In a curious autobiography, written entirely in the third person, which Mr. Lincoln prepared at the request of a friend in 1860,[[9]] he says of his exploits as a hunter: “A few days before the completion of his eighth year, in the absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin; and Abraham, with a rifle gun, standing inside, shot through a crack and killed one of them. He has never since pulled the trigger on any larger game.” This exploit is confirmed by Dennis Hanks, who says: “No doubt about A. Lincoln’s killing the turkey. He done it with his father’s rifle, made by William Lutes of Bullitt County, Kentucky. I have killed a hundred deer with her myself; turkeys too numerous to mention.”