When Thomas Lincoln was first married (1806), he took his wife to live in Elizabethtown, in a wretched shed, which has since been used as a slaughter-house and stable. About a year after, he removed to Nolin’s Creek. Four years after the birth of Abraham (1809), he again migrated to a more picturesque and fertile place, a few miles distant on Knob Creek. Here he remained four years, and though he was the occupant of over 200 acres of good land, never cultivated more than a little patch, “being satisfied with milk and meal for food.” When his children went to school they walked eight miles, going and returning, having only maize bread for dinner. In 1816, the father, after having sold his interest in the farm for ten barrels of whiskey and twenty dollars, built himself a crazy flat-boat, and set sail alone on the Ohio, seeking for a new home. By accident, the boat foundered, and much of the cargo was lost; but Thomas Lincoln pushed on, and found a fitting place to settle in Indiana, near the spot on which the village of Gentryville now stands. It was in the untrodden wilderness, and here he soon after brought his family, to live for the first year in what is called a half-faced camp, or a rough hut of poles, of which only three sides were enclosed, the fourth being open to the air. In 1817, Betsy Sparrow, an aunt of Mrs. Lincoln, and her husband, Thomas, with a nephew named Dennis Hanks, joined the Lincolns, who removed to a better house, if that could be called a house which was built of rough logs, and had neither floor, door, nor window. For two years they continued to live in this manner. Lincoln, a carpenter, was too lazy to make himself the simplest furniture. They had a few three-legged stools; the only bed was made in a singular manner. Its head and one side were formed by a corner of the cabin, the bed-post was a single crotch cut from the forest. Laid upon this crotch were the ends of two hickory poles, whose other extremities were placed in two holes made in the logs of the wall. On these sticks rested “slats,” or boards rudely split from trees with an axe, and on these slats was laid a bag filled with dried leaves. This was the bed of Thomas and Nancy Lincoln, and into it--when the skins hung at the cabin entrance did not keep out the cold--little Abraham and his sister crept for warmth.[6] Very little is recorded of the childhood of the future President. He was once nearly drowned in a stream, and when eight years of age shot a wild turkey, which, he declared in after life, was the largest game he had ever killed--a remarkable statement for a man who had grown up in a deer country, where buck-skin formed the common material for clothing, and venison hams passed for money. One thing is at least certain--that, till he was ten years old, the poor boy was ill-clad, dirty, and ill-used by his father. He had, however, learned to write.