The early life of Abraham Lincoln: / containing many unpublished documents and unpublished reminiscences of Lincoln's early friends

by Ida M. Tarbell

The place chosen for their new home was the Sangamon country in central Illinois. It was at that day a country of great renown in the West, the name meaning “The land where there is plenty to eat.” One of the family—John Hanks, a cousin of Dennis—was already there, and the inviting reports he had sent to Indiana were no doubt what led the Lincolns to decide on Illinois as their future home.

Gentryville saw young Lincoln depart with real regret, and his friends gave him a score of rude proofs that he would not be forgotten. Even to-day there is not a family living in and around Gentryville, who remembers the Lincolns at all, who has not some legend to repeat of their departure. They tell how in those days “neighbors were like relatives,” and everybody offered some kindly service to the movers as a parting sign of good-will. The entire Lincoln family was invited to spend the last night before starting, with Mr. Gentry. He was so loath to part with Lincoln that he “accompanied the movers along the road a spell.” After they were gone, one of his sons, James Gentry, planted a cedar tree in memory of Abraham, which now marks the site of the Lincoln home.

JOHN E. ROLL, WHO HELPED LINCOLN BUILD THE FLATBOAT.
Born in Green Village, New Jersey, June 4, 1814. He went to Illinois in 1830, the year in which Mr. Lincoln went, settling in Sangamon town, where he had relatives. It was here he met Lincoln, and made the “pins” for the flatboat. Later Mr. Roll went to Springfield. A quarter of the city is now known as “Roll’s addition.” Mr. Roll was well acquainted with Lincoln, and when the President left Springfield he gave Mr. Roll his dog Fido. Mr. Roll knew Stephen A. Douglas well, and carries a watch which once belonged to the “Little Giant.”

The spot on the hill overlooking Buckthorn valley, where the Lincolns said good-by to their old home and to the home of Sarah Lincoln Grigsby, to the grave of the mother and wife, to all their neighbors and friends, is still pointed out. Buckthorn valley held many recollections dear to them all, but to no one of the company was the place dearer than to Abraham. It is certain that he felt the parting keenly, and he certainly never forgot his years in the Hoosier State. One of the most touching experiences he relates in all his published letters is his emotion at visiting his old Indiana home fourteen years after he had left it. So strongly was he moved by the scenes of his first conscious sorrows, efforts, joys, ambitions, that he put into verse the feelings they awakened.[^[12]]

SANGAMON TOWN IN 1831.
Drawn for this work by J. McCan Davis, with the aid of Mr. John E. Roll, a former resident.

While he never attempted to conceal the poverty and hardship of these days, and would speak humorously of the “pretty pinching times” he saw, he never regarded his life at this time as mean or pitiable. Frequently he talked to his friends in later days of his boyhood, and always with apparent pleasure. “Mr. Lincoln told this story” (of his youth), says Leonard Swett, “as the story of a happy childhood. There was nothing sad or pinched, and nothing of want, and no allusion to want in any part of it. His own description of his youth was that of a joyous, happy boyhood. It was told with mirth and glee, and illustrated by pointed anecdote, often interrupted by his jocund laugh.”

And he was right. There was nothing ignoble or mean in this Indiana pioneer life. It was rude, but with only the rudeness which the ambitious are willing to endure in order to push on to a better condition than they otherwise could know. These people did not accept their hardships apathetically. They did not regard them as permanent. They were only the temporary deprivations necessary in order to accomplish what they had home into the country to do. For this reason they endured hopefully all that was hard. It is worth notice, too, that there was nothing belittling in their life; there was no pauperism, no shirking. Each family provided for its own simple wants, and had the conscious dignity which comes from being equal to a situation. If their lives lacked culture and refinement, they were rich in independence and self-reliance.