Mordecai, the Indian-killer, and his brother, Josiah, remained in Virginia, and grew up to be respectable, prosperous men. The younger brother, Thomas, was always “idle, thriftless, poor, a hunter, and a rover.” He exercised occasionally in a rough way the calling of a carpenter, and, wandering from place to place, began at different times to cultivate the wilderness, but with little success, owing to his laziness. Yet he was a man of great strength and vigour, and once “thrashed the monstrous bully of Breckinridge County in three minutes, and came off without a scratch.” He was an inveterate talker, or popular teller of stories and anecdotes, and a Jackson Democrat in politics, which signified that he belonged to the more radical of the two political parties which then prevailed in America. In religion, he was, says Lamon, who derived his information from Mr. W. H. Herndon, “nothing at times, and a member of various denominations by turns.” In 1806, he lived at Elizabethtown, in Hardin County, Kentucky, where, in the same year and place, he married Nancy Hanks: the exact date of the marriage is unknown. It is said of this young woman that she was a tall and beautiful brunette, with an understanding which, by her family at least, was considered wonderful. She could read and write--as rare accomplishments in those days in Kentucky backwoods as they still are among the poor whites of the South or their Western descendants.[4] In later life she was sadly worn by hard labour, both in the house and fields, and her features were marked with a melancholy which was probably constitutional, and which her son inherited. It is to be regretted that President Abraham Lincoln never spoke, except with great reluctance, of his early life, or of his parents. As it is, the researches of W. H. Herndon and others have indicated the hereditary sources of his chief characteristics. We know that the grandfather was a vigorous backwoodsman, who died a violent death; that his uncle was a grim and determined manslayer, carrying out for years the blood-feud provoked by the murder of his parent; that his mother was habitually depressed, and that his father was a favourite of both men and women, though a mere savage when irritated, fond of fun, an endless storyteller, physically powerful, and hating hard work. Out of all these preceding traits, it is not difficult to imagine how the giant Abraham came to be inflexible of purpose and strong of will, though indolent--why he was good-natured to excess in his excess of strength--and why he was a great humourist, and at the same time a melancholy man.