The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln (Illustrated Edition). Ida M. Tarbell
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carefully saved. Most of the dishes were of pewter; the spoons, iron; the knives and forks, horn-handled.
The Lincolns of course made their own soap and candles, and if they had cotton or wool to wear they had literally to grow it. One of the “old settlers” of Illinois says of her experience in clothing her family:
“As for our clothes, we had to raise, pick, spin, and weave cotton for winter and summer. We also made linsey of wool and flax. The first indigo we had we raised. Besides that we used sumac berries, white-walnut bark, and other barks for coloring.
DENNIS HANKS.
From a photograph in the Libby Prison Museum of Chicago, by permission of Mr. C. F. Gunther. Dennis Hanks, a cousin of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, was born in Kentucky, in 1799, and was brought up by his uncle Thomas Sparrow. The year after Thomas Lincoln moved to Indiana, Thomas Sparrow followed him, but both he and his wife died there in 1818. Dennis then became an inmate of the Lincoln household. He afterwards married one of the daughters of Sally Bush Lincoln. It was largely through his influence that the Lincolns moved into Illinois in 1830. Dennis Hanks has been one of the most prolific contributors to the early period of Mr. Lincoln’s life, his letters to Mr. Herndon being full of curious and valuable matter. He died in October, 1892. One of his daughters, Mrs. Harriet Chapman, is still living at Charleston, Illinois.
“Now for cotton picking. We children had to lie before the fire and pick the seed from the cotton bolls before we could go to bed. The warmer the cotton the better it picked; so we would take a good sweat. The next day that had to be carded and spun; so some would soap the cotton, some card, and some spin; and when we would get enough spun and colored to make a dress apiece we would put it in the loom and weave it. It did not take fifteen or twenty yards to make a dress then; six or eight yards of linsey were enough for any woman.”
It is probable that young Abraham Lincoln wore little cotton or linsey-woolsey. His trousers were of roughly tanned deer-skin, his foot-covering a home-made moccasin, his cap a coonskin; it was only the material for his shirt or blouse which was woven at home. If this costume had some obvious disadvantages, it was not to be despised. So good an authority as Governor Reynolds says of one of its articles—the linsey-woolsey shirt—“It was an excellent garment. I have never felt so happy and healthy since I put it off.”
These “pretty pinching times,” as Abraham Lincoln once described the early days in Indiana, lasted until 1819. The year before, Nancy Lincoln had died, and for many months no more forlorn place could be conceived than this pioneer home bereft of its guiding spirit; but finally Thomas Lincoln went back to Kentucky and returned with a new wife—Sally Bush Johnston, a widow with three children, John, Sarah, and Matilda. The new mother came well provided with household furniture, bringing many things unfamiliar to little Abraham—“one fine bureau, one table, one set of chairs, one large clothes-chest, cooking utensils, knives, forks, bedding, and other articles.” She was a woman of energy, thrift, and gentleness, and at once made the cabin home-like, and taught the children habits of cleanliness and comfort.
MOUTH OF ANDERSON CREEK, WHERE LINCOLN KEPT THE FERRY-BOAT.
From a photograph taken for this biography. This ferry, at the mouth of Anderson Creek, was first established and owned by James McDaniel, and was afterwards kept by his son-in-law James Taylor. It was the latter who hired Abraham Lincoln, about 1826, to attend the ferry-boat. As the boat did not keep him busy all the time, he acted as man-of-all-work around the farm. A son of James Taylor, Captain Green B. Taylor of South Dakota, is still alive, and remembers distinctly the months Lincoln spent in his father’s employ. Captain Taylor says that Lincoln “slept up-stairs” with him, and used to read “till near midnight.”
JOSIAH CRAWFORD.
Among those whom Lincoln served in Indiana as “hired boy” was Josiah Crawford, a well-to-do farmer living near Gentryville. Mr. Crawford owned a copy of Weems’s “Life of Washington,” a precious book in those days, and Lincoln borrowed it to read. “Late in the night, before going to rest, he placed the borrowed book in his only bookcase, the opening between two logs of the walls of the cabin, and retired to dream of its contents. During the night it rained; the water dripping over the ‘mud-daubing’ on to the book stained the leaves and warped the binding. Abe valued the book in proportion to the interest he had in the hero, and felt that the owner must value it beyond his ability to pay. It was with the greatest trepidation he took the book home and told the story, and asked how he might hope to make restitution. Mr. Crawford answered: ‘Being as it is you, Abe, I won’t be hard on you. Come over and shuck corn three days, and the book is yours.’ Shuck corn three days and receive a hero’s life! He felt that the owner was giving him a magnificent present. After reading the book he used to tell the Crawfords: ‘I do not always intend to delve, grub, shuck corn, split rails, and the like.’ His whole mind was devoted to books, and he declared he ‘was going to fit himself for a profession.’ These declarations were often made to Mrs. Crawford, who took almost a mother’s interest in him, and she would ask: ‘What do you want to be now?’ His answer was invariably: ‘I’ll be President.’ As he was generally playing a joke on some one, she would answer: ‘You’d make a purty President with all your tricks and jokes. Now, wouldn’t you?’ He would then declare: ‘Oh, I’ll study and get ready, and then the chance will come.’”6
Abraham Becomes a Laborer.
Abraham was ten years old when his new mother came from Kentucky, and he was already an important member of the family. He was remarkably strong for his years, and the work he could do in a day was a decided advantage to Thomas Lincoln. The axe which had been put into his hand to help in making the first clearing, he had never been allowed to drop; indeed, as he says himself, “from that till within his twenty-third year he was almost constantly handling that most useful instrument.” Besides, he drove the team, cut the elm and linn brush with which the stock was often fed, learned to handle the old shovel-plough, to wield the sickle, to thresh the wheat with a flail, to fan and clean it with a sheet, to go to mill and turn the hard-earned grist into flour. In short, he learned all the trades the settler’s boy must know, and so well that when his father did not need him he could hire him to the neighbors. Thomas Lincoln also taught him the rudiments of carpentry and cabinet-making, and kept him busy much of the time as his assistant in his trade. There are houses still standing, in and near Gentryville, on which it is said he worked. The families of Lamar, Jones, Crawford, Gentry, Turnham, and Richardson, all claim the honor of having employed him upon their cabins.
A MISSISSIPPI “BROAD-HORN.”
From a model in the exhibit of the United States National Museum at the Atlanta Exposition of 1895. The flatboat which Abraham Lincoln piloted to New Orleans was not, probably, as well built a boat as the above model represents; but it was built on the same general plan. The hold was enclosed to protect the produce, and on the deck was a cabin in which the boatmen lived. In going down the river, rough sails were sometimes rigged up on these broad-horns, though they floated usually, directed by huge paddles. If the boat was brought back, it was warped and poled by hand up the river. More often, however, the boatmen sold both boat and cargo at New Orleans, and came back by the steamers as deck passengers. Boats like the two models on this page are still seen in great numbers on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
A RIVER PRODUCE BOAT.
From a model in the exhibit of the United States National Museum at the Atlanta Exposition of 1895. The photograph