Challenges to land titles were common in Kentucky's early years, and the Lincoln family experienced these problems firsthand.
In 1811, Thomas and Nancy Lincoln moved here, to Knob Creek, with their two children, Sarah and Abraham. They leased thirty acres of bottomland along the Old Cumberland Trail, and it was here that their third child, Thomas, was born and died in infancy.
Abraham and his sister attended the local school, located two miles northeast of here. Two teachers, Zachariah Riney and Caleb Hazel, gave young Abraham his first formal schooling. Lincoln's classroom education, however, would not last. The demands of the frontier required him to work the family farm, but he continued his education. He borrowed books and read them in front of the fireplace or under a shade tree.
In 1815, the Lincolns and nine of their neighbors were involved in a land title dispute for the entire Knob Creek valley. The next autumn, Thomas Lincoln lost a court case to regain the Sinking Spring farm where the Lincoln Birthplace Memorial is now located. He then moved the family to present-day Spencer County, Indiana.
[ Insert - Lincoln letter to Hon. Samuel Haycraft ]
The place on Knob Creek, mentioned by Mr. Read, I remember very well; but I was not born there. As my parents have told me, I was born on Nolin, very much nearer Hodgin's-Mill than the Knob Creek place is. My earliest recollection, however, is of the Knob Creek Place.
—Letter from Abraham Lincoln to the Hon. Samuel Haycraft, June 4, 1860
[ Insert on Left Side ]
Kentucky
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Lincoln
* Heritage Trail *
1809 — Abraham Lincoln born at Sinking Spring Farm, in present-day Larue County, Kentucky.
1816 — Lincoln family moved from Kentucky.
1841 — Abraham Lincoln visited his friend Joshua speed at Farmington, the Speed family plantation, in Louisville, Kentucky.
1842 — Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd of Lexington, Kentucky.
1847 — The Lincoln family visited Lexington, Kentucky, en route to Abraham's only term in Congress.
1860 — Abraham Lincoln elected President of the United States in November.
1865 — Abraham Lincoln assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.
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