"Aunt Sairy sartainly did have faculty. I reckon we was all purty ragged and dirty when she got there. The fust thing she did was to tell me to tote one of Tom's carpenter benches to a place outside the door, near the hoss trough. Then she had me an' Abe an' John Johnson, her boy, fill the trough with spring water. She put out a gourd full of soft soap, and another one to dip water with, an' told us boys to wash up fur dinner. You just naturally had to be somebody when Aunt Sairy was around. She had Tom build her a loom, an' when she heerd o' some lime burners bein' round Gentryville, Tom had to mosey over an' git some lime an' whitewash the cabin. An' he made her an ash hopper fur lye, an' a chicken-house nothin' could git into. Then—te-he-he-he!—she set some kind of a dead-fall trap fur him, an' got Tom to jine the Baptist Church. Cracky, but Aunt Sally was some punkins!"—American Magazine, February, 1908, p. 364.
I am of opinion that what Mrs. Sarah Bush Lincoln told Herndon was that her husband sometimes attended the Presbyterian service, and that the church he joined was the Baptist, but not the Hardshell Baptist. But evidence is wholly lacking that he had any connection with the Presbyterian Church, or with the Free-will Baptists, of which latter sect he probably never heard.
The church at Farmington of which Thomas Lincoln became a member is not now in existence. I have endeavored through investigation in Farmington, and by correspondence with Mr. Robert T. Lincoln, to ascertain its denomination. It called itself "Christian," and Herndon did not doubt that that name indicated that it was a church of the denomination sometimes called "Campbellite." But that is not certain. Other denominations claim that as their distinctive name, and one of them was at that time active in that part of Illinois. My inquiries have brought me no certain knowledge on this point; but Mr. Jesse W. Weik is of opinion that the denomination was that known as "New Light." It is possible that Herndon was in error in every one of his three affirmations concerning the religion of Thomas Lincoln, and that the President's father was never a Free-will Baptist, never a Presbyterian, and never a Disciple or Campbellite. I have endeavored to learn whether his change from the Baptist to the "Christian" church was a matter of conviction or convenience, but on this I have found nothing except a statement from the minister who buried him, in which it would appear that his change of polity was a matter of conviction. This minister spoke very highly of Thomas Lincoln, whom he had known well in the latter years of his life.
There has been undue attempt to credit the pious boy Abraham with the religious service conducted over the grave of his mother by Rev. David Elkin[6] some months after her demise. There is no good authority for this legend. Herndon probably tells the truth about it:
"Within a few months, and before the close of the winter, David Elkin, an itinerant preacher whom Mrs. Lincoln had known in Kentucky, happened into the settlement, and in response to the invitation from the family and friends, delivered a funeral sermon over her grave. No one is able now to remember the language of Parson Elkin's discourse, but it is recalled that he commemorated the virtues and good phases of character, and passed in silence the few shortcomings and frailties of the poor woman sleeping under the winter's snow."
—Herndon, I, 28.
This does not compel us to believe that there had been no preacher in the Pigeon Creek settlement since the death of Nancy Hanks.[7] It was customary among these Kentucky-bred people to hold the funeral service some weeks or months after the burial. The author of this volume has attended many such services.
The reasons require some explanation. The dead were commonly buried on the day following death. There were, of course, no facilities for embalming or preserving the corpse for any great length of time. Preachers were nearly all farmers; and the particular minister with whose church the family was affiliated might be living at a considerable distance and be at that time at some distant place upon his wide circuit. No minister expected to preach every Sunday in any one place. A monthly appointment was the maximum attempted; and the more remote settlements were not reached statedly by any one preacher oftener than once in three months. There were occasional services, however, by other ministers riding through the country and preaching wherever they stayed overnight. It was the author's custom when coming unexpectedly into a valley to spread word up and down the creek that there would be preaching that night in the schoolhouse or in the home where he was entertained. The impromptu announcement never failed to bring a congregation.
What took David Elkin into Indiana we do not know. He may have been looking for a better farm than he had in Kentucky, where he could dig out a living between his preaching appointments. He may have been burdened for the souls of certain families formerly under his care and now gone out like the Lincolns into a howling wilderness. The late summer and early autumn between the end of corn-plowing and the beginning of fodder-pulling afforded such a minister opportunity to throw his saddlebags over his horse and start on a longer circuit than usual; and the winter gave him still another opportunity for long absence. He took no money and he collected none, or next to none, but he had free welcome everywhere with pork and corn pone for supper and fried chicken for breakfast. Many a time the author of this volume has ridden up to a house just before suppertime, has partaken with the family of its customary cornbread and bacon or ham, and after preaching and a good night's rest has been wakened in the morning before the rising of the sun by a muffled squawk and flutter as one or more chickens were pulled down out of the trees. After this fashion did the people of the backwoods welcome the messengers of the Lord.
Not necessarily on his next appearance in a settlement is the preacher requested to conduct the funeral service of persons deceased since his last visit. The matter is arranged with more of deliberation. A date is set some time ahead and word is sent to distant friends.[8] After a time of general sickness such as had visited Pigeon Creek in the epidemic of the "milk sick," Parson Elkin may have had several funerals to preach in the same cemetery or at the schoolhouse nearest at hand. I have known a half-dozen funerals to be included in one sermon with full biographical particulars of each decedent and detailed descriptions of all the deathbed scenes, together with rapturous forecasts of the future bliss of the good people who were dead and abundant warnings of the flaming hell that awaited their impenitent neighbors. Even those people who had not been noted for their piety during life were almost invariably slipped into heaven through a deathbed repentance or by grace of the uncovenanted mercies of God. It is the business of all preachers to be very stern with the living and very charitable toward the dead.[9]