A preserved log cabin at the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park in Hodgenville, Kentucky. It is symbolic of the one that Abraham Lincoln was born in.
Born on February 12, 1809, in a log cabin on an isolated farm in the slave state of Kentucky, Abraham had an older sister, Sarah, who died in childbirth when he was nineteen, and a younger brother who died in infancy. His father, Thomas, had never learned to read and, according to Lincoln, never did “more in the way of writing than to blunglingly sign his own name.”
In later life, Lincoln neither romanticized nor sentimentalized the difficult circumstances of his childhood. When asked in 1860 by his campaign biographer, John Locke Scripps, to share the details of his early days, he hesitated. “Why Scripps, it is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life. It can all be condensed into a single sentence …. you will find in Gray’s Elegy: ‘The short and simple annals of the poor.'”
Team of Rivals
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Simon & Schuster
To see a timeline of Lincoln’s life and many other interesting photographs, check out the HistoryPlace.com.