His affection for his mother was very strong, and long after her death he would speak of her affectionately and tearfully. She was a woman five feet five inches in height, slender of figure, pale of complexion, sad of expression, and of a sensitive nature. Of a heroic nature, she yet shrank from the rude life around her. About two years after her removal from Kentucky to Indiana she died. “Abe” was then ten years old. She was buried under a tree near the cabin home, where little “Abe” would often betake himself and, sitting on her lonely grave, weep over his irreparable loss.
Lincoln’s mother was buried in a green pine box made by his father. Although a boy of ten years at that time, it was through his efforts that a parson came all the way from Kentucky to Indiana three months later to preach the sermon and conduct the service. The child could not rest in peace till due honor had been done his dead mother.
WHAT LINCOLN’S STEP-MOTHER SAID OF HIM.
“Abe was a good boy, and I can say what scarcely one woman—a mother—can say in a thousand: Abe never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused, in fact or appearance, to do anything I requested him. I never gave him a cross word in all my life. … His mind and mine—what little I had—seemed to run together. He was here after he was elected President. He was a dutiful son to me always. I think he loved me truly. I had a son, John, who was raised with Abe. Both were good boys; but I must say, both now being dead, that Abe was the best boy I ever saw, or expect to see.”—Ida M. Tarbell.
LINCOLN’S FIRST LOVE.
Lincoln’s first love was Anna Rutledge, of New Salem, whose father was keeper of the Rutledge tavern where “Abe” boarded. The girl had been engaged to a young man named John McNeill, whom, we are informed, the village community pronounced an adventurer and a man unworthy the girl’s love. He left for the east, promising, however, to return within a year and claim her as his wife, so the story reads. According to Mrs. William Prewitt, a sister of Anna Rutledge, who is at present (1898) living, the engagement was broken off before McNeill went away, so that she was free to receive the attentions of “Abe” Lincoln. She finally promised to become his wife in the spring of 1835, soon after his return from Vandalia. But, unfortunately, circumstances did not permit of a marriage then, Lincoln being barely able to support himself, not yet having been admitted to the bar, and the girl, being but seventeen years old. It was agreed that she should attend an academy at Jacksonville, Ill., and Lincoln would devote himself to his law studies till the next spring, when he would be admitted to the bar, and then they would be married.
New Salem was deeply interested in the young lovers and prophesied a happy life for them; but fate willed it otherwise. Anna Rutledge became seriously ill, with an attack of brain fever, and when it was seen that her recovery was impossible Lincoln, her lover, was sent for. They “passed an hour alone in an anguished parting,” and soon after (August 25, 1835,) Anna died.