Footprints of Abraham Lincoln: Presenting many interesting facts, reminiscences and illustrations never before publishedHobson, J. T. (Jonathan Todd)
History
Footprints of Abraham Lincoln: Presenting many interesting facts, reminiscences and illustrations never before published
Hobson, J. T. (Jonathan Todd)
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Anecdotes
Allen Brooner was nine years younger than his brother Henry. He was
born in Kentucky, October 22, 1813. He was a minister in the United
Brethren Church more than fifty years. Among other items, he gave me
the following, which were written at the time:
"During my mother's last sickness, Mrs. Lincoln, the mother of
Abraham Lincoln, came to see her. Mother said, 'I believe I
will have to die.' Mrs. Lincoln said, 'Oh, you may outlive me.'
She died just one week from the death of my mother. This was in
October, 1818. I was five years old when mother died. I remember
some one came to me in the night and told me my mother was dead.
Thomas Lincoln made mother's coffin, and sawed the lumber with
a whip-saw to make the coffin. She was taken on a sled to the
graveyard on a hill, one quarter of a mile south of where Lincoln
City now stands. Old man Howell took the corpse. He rode the horse
hitched to the sled, and took me up, and I rode on the horse
before him. I remember that his long beard bothered me. We did not
have wagons in those days. The first wagon I ever saw, my father
made, and it had wooden tires."
Reference will be made again to some facts stated by this associate of
Abraham Lincoln. "Uncle Allen" died at his old home, near Dale, Spencer
County, Indiana, April 2, 1902, in his eighty-ninth year, respected
by all. I am indebted to his daughter, Mrs. Sarah Knowlton, for his
photograph, taken at seventy-five years of age.
Nancy Hanks Lincoln died October 5, 1818, when her daughter Sarah was
eleven and her son Abraham was nine years old. Abraham's mother had
taught him to read and write, and, young as he was, he wrote for an
old minister, David Elkin, whom the family had known in Kentucky, to
come and preach his mother's funeral. Some time after, the minister
came and the funeral was preached at the grave where many people had
gathered. The minister stated that he had come because of the letter
he had received from the little son of the dead mother. As I have
stood by that grave, in my imagination I have seen that primitive
congregation—the old minister, the lonely husband, and the two
motherless children, Sarah and Abraham, on that sad occasion.
After the death of Thomas and Betsy Sparrow, Dennis Hanks and his
sister Sophia became inmates of the Lincoln home.
For many years Mrs. Lincoln's grave was neglected. But few persons were
buried at that graveyard. In 1879, Mr. P. E. Studebaker, of South Bend,
Indiana, erected a marble slab at the grave, and some of the citizens
of Rockport enclosed it with an iron railing. Later a larger and more
appropriate monument has also been placed at the grave, and several
acres surrounding, forming a park, have been enclosed with an iron
fence. The park is under the control of an association which has been
incorporated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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