They were living in the cabin when Abe's mother sickened and died. He was broken-hearted. She had taught him what little he knew. Her last words to him were: "Try to live as I have taught you and to love your Heavenly Father."
Lincoln's tribute to his mother
Many years after, when he became famous, he said: "All that I am or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother." She was put in a coffin roughly cut out of logs by the same tools that had made their furniture, and laid to rest in a corner of the clearing. Long years afterward a good man put a stone over the grave, with this inscription: "Nancy Hanks Lincoln, the mother of President Lincoln, died October 5, A.D. 1818, aged 35 years."
Lincoln gets a new mother
After a year his father went back to Kentucky to look about for a wife. He found a widow, named Sarah Bush Johnston, and married her. He had known her before he met Nancy Hanks. She was thrifty and industrious, and her bedding and other household goods filled a four-horse wagon.
Before winter came she made her husband put a good floor, and a door, and windows in the cabin. She took charge of Abe and his sister, and made them "look a little more human." She put good clothes on the children and put them to sleep in comfortable beds.
Abe's education
159. Lincoln Educates Himself. Schools were scarce in that new country, and Abe never had more than a year at school. His stepmother encouraged him in every way to study at home.
LINCOLN READING BY THE LIGHT OF THE OPEN FIRE