The Child's Book of American Biography

by Mary Stoyell Stimpson

Abraham was born in Kentucky and lived in that State with his parents and his one sister until he was eight years old.

The Lincolns were very, very poor. They lived in a small log cabin on the banks of a winding creek. They need not have been quite so poor, but the truth of the matter is that Mr. Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's father, was lazy. To be sure he fastened a few logs together for shelter, cut a little wood, and dug up some ground for a garden. But after the corn and potatoes were planted, they never received any care, and there is no doubt the family would have gone hungry many a day if Abraham had not hurried home with fish which he caught in a near-by stream, or if Mrs. Lincoln had not taken her rifle into the woods and shot a deer or a bear. The meat from these would last for weeks, and the skins of animals Mrs. Lincoln always saved to make into clothes for the children.

Thomas Lincoln could not read or spell, and as near as I can find out, was not a bit ashamed of it, either. But his wife, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, was a fair scholar and taught Abraham and his sister, Sarah, to read and spell.

There was no floor to the Lincoln's log cabin and no furnishings but a few three-legged stools and a bed made of wooden slats fastened together with pegs. Abraham and Sarah slept on piles of leaves or brush.

Slates and pencils were scarce, and Abraham used to lie before the fire when he was seven or eight years old, with a flat slab of wood and a stick which he burned at one end till it was charred; then he formed letters with it on the wood. In that way he taught himself to write. His mother had three books, a Bible, a catechism, and a spelling-book. He had never had any boy playmate and was greatly excited when an aunt and uncle of his mother's, Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow, with a nephew, named Dennis Hanks, arrived at the creek and lived in a half-faced camp near by. Dennis and Abraham became fast friends.

A fever swept the country, and Abraham's mother died. Three years later his father married a new wife. The second Mrs. Lincoln had been married before and had three children, a boy and two girls. So there were five children to play together. Mr. Lincoln had built a better cabin, and she brought such furniture as the Lincoln children had never seen. Their eyes opened wide at the sight of real chairs and tables. She made Abraham and Sarah pretty new clothes. They had neat, comfortable beds, and the two sets of children were very happy. Mrs. Lincoln loved Abraham and saw that there was the making of a smart man in him. She helped him study, and when there was school for a short time in a distant log hut, she sent Abraham every day. When the school ended, there were four years when there was no school anywhere near their settlement, so she read with Abraham and kept him at his lessons in reading and arithmetic all that time.

Hunters and traders rode that way sometimes, and if a traveler had a book about him, Abraham was sure to get a look at it.

A new settler had a Life of Washington. Abraham looked at the book hungrily for weeks and finally worked up courage to ask the loan of it. He promised to take good care of it. He was then earning money to give his parents by chopping down trees in the forests, and he had no time to read but in the evenings. One night the rain soaked through the cracks of the cabin, and the precious book that he had promised to take good care of was stained on every page. What was he to do? He had no money to pay for the book, but he hurried to the settler's cabin and told him what had happened. He offered to work in the cornfield for three days to pay Mr. Crawford for the loss of the book. It was heavy work, but he did it and, in the end, owned the stained Life of Washington, himself.

Abraham had a fine memory. He could repeat almost the whole of a sermon, a speech, or a story that he had happened to hear. He had a funny way of telling stories, too, so when the farmers or woodchoppers were taking their noon rest, they always asked him to amuse them.

When Abraham was sixteen years old, he was six feet tall and so strong that all the neighbors hired him whenever he was not working for his father. He joked and laughed at his work, and every one liked him. He did any kind of work to earn an honest penny. Once he had a fine time working for a man that ran a ferry-boat, because this man owned a history of the United States and took a newspaper, and Abraham had more to read than ever before in his life. But he had to take the time he should have slept to read, because when the boat wasn't running there was farm work, housework (for he helped this man's wife, even to tending the baby), and rail splitting. Then he kept store for a man. It was here that he won a nickname that he kept all his life—"Honest Abe." A woman's bill came to two dollars and six cents. Later in the day Abraham found he had charged her six cents too much. After he closed the store that night, he walked three miles to pay her back those six cents. Another time when he weighed tea for a woman, there was a weight on the scales so that she did not get as much tea as she paid for. That meant another long tramp. But he was liked for his honesty and good nature.