Peter Brooner had two sons, Henry and Allen. I became acquainted with these brothers twenty-two years ago. I was pastor of a church at Dale, three miles from Lincoln City, two years, near where Allen lived, and of a country church near where Henry lived. I was frequently at their homes. They both knew Abraham Lincoln quite well. The Thomas Lincoln and Peter Brooner homes were only one-half mile apart. Henry was five years older, and Allen was four years younger than Abraham. "Uncle Henry," as he was always called, gave me the following items, which I wrote at the time, and have preserved the original notes:
"I was born in Breckenridge County, Kentucky, February 7, 1804. We came to Indiana in 1814, when Allen was one year old. No man has lived longer in the State than I have, for I have lived in it ever since it became a State, and before. The Lincoln family came to Indiana two years later, and we lived one-half mile apart. During my mother's last sickness, Mrs. Lincoln often came to see her, and died just one week after my mother's death. I remember very distinctly that when Mrs. Lincoln's grave was filled, my father, Peter Brooner, extended his hand to Thomas Lincoln and said, 'We are brothers, now,' meaning that they were brothers in the same kind of sorrow. The bodies of my mother and Mrs. Lincoln were conveyed to their graves on sleds. I often stayed all night at Thomas Lincoln's. Dennis Hanks and his sister Sophia lived with Thomas and Betsy Sparrow, and at their deaths Dennis and his sister heired the estate. I helped drive up the stock on the day of the sale of the property. Dennis Hanks married Lincoln's step-sister. I often went with Lincoln on horseback to Huffman's Mill, on Anderson Creek, a distance of sixteen miles. He had a great memory, and for hours he would tell me what he had read."
Henry Brooner died April 4, 1890, two years after the above statements were given, at the age of eighty-six. Everybody loved and respected "Uncle Henry." Reference will be made in another chapter to further statements made by him on the same occasion.
Allen Brooner was nine years younger than his brother Henry. He was born in Kentucky, October 22, 1813. He was a minister in the United Brethren Church more than fifty years. Among other items, he gave me the following, which were written at the time:
"During my mother's last sickness, Mrs. Lincoln, the mother of Abraham Lincoln, came to see her. Mother said, 'I believe I will have to die.' Mrs. Lincoln said, 'Oh, you may outlive me.' She died just one week from the death of my mother. This was in October, 1818. I was five years old when mother died. I remember some one came to me in the night and told me my mother was dead. Thomas Lincoln made mother's coffin, and sawed the lumber with a whip-saw to make the coffin. She was taken on a sled to the graveyard on a hill, one quarter of a mile south of where Lincoln City now stands. Old man Howell took the corpse. He rode the horse hitched to the sled, and took me up, and I rode on the horse before him. I remember that his long beard bothered me. We did not have wagons in those days. The first wagon I ever saw, my father made, and it had wooden tires."
Reference will be made again to some facts stated by this associate of Abraham Lincoln. "Uncle Allen" died at his old home, near Dale, Spencer County, Indiana, April 2, 1902, in his eighty-ninth year, respected by all. I am indebted to his daughter, Mrs. Sarah Knowlton, for his photograph, taken at seventy-five years of age.
Nancy Hanks Lincoln died October 5, 1818, when her daughter Sarah was eleven and her son Abraham was nine years old. Abraham's mother had taught him to read and write, and, young as he was, he wrote for an old minister, David Elkin, whom the family had known in Kentucky, to come and preach his mother's funeral. Some time after, the minister came and the funeral was preached at the grave where many people had gathered. The minister stated that he had come because of the letter he had received from the little son of the dead mother. As I have stood by that grave, in my imagination I have seen that primitive congregation—the old minister, the lonely husband, and the two motherless children, Sarah and Abraham, on that sad occasion.
After the death of Thomas and Betsy Sparrow, Dennis Hanks and his sister Sophia became inmates of the Lincoln home.
For many years Mrs. Lincoln's grave was neglected. But few persons were buried at that graveyard. In 1879, Mr. P. E. Studebaker, of South Bend, Indiana, erected a marble slab at the grave, and some of the citizens of Rockport enclosed it with an iron railing. Later a larger and more appropriate monument has also been placed at the grave, and several acres surrounding, forming a park, have been enclosed with an iron fence. The park is under the control of an association which has been incorporated.
In December, 1819, Thomas Lincoln went to Kentucky and married a widow, Sarah Bush Johnston, whom he had known there before coming to Indiana. She had three children, John, Matilda, and Sarah. She was a most excellent woman, and proved worthy of a mother's place in the home of Thomas Lincoln. Dennis Hanks married one of the daughters, and Levi Hall married the other.