Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4: A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History
History
Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4: A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History
Biography
Eighteen months after the death of his wife, Mr. Lincoln married Mrs.
Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow who had been a neighbor of his in
Kentucky. To his stepmother Abraham became very much attached, and he
always entertained the greatest respect and affection for her. His
education was very simple, his school days few, and his books fewer
still. Before leaving Kentucky he learned to read while listening to his
mother as she gave lessons to his father. In 1814, a Catholic priest,
Zachariah Riney, who travelled through the country, opened a school in
an untenanted cabin at Hodgensville, and for a few weeks gave
instructions to the youth of the neighborhood. Abraham attended this
school during its brief existence. In 1822 Azel Dorsey was employed as
teacher at Pigeon Creek, Ind., and during his short stay Abraham Lincoln
was his most attentive pupil. Two years after, Abraham went to school
for several months, and in 1824 his school days came to an end. His time
at school did not exceed twelve months altogether. In the meantime he
had read Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe," Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress,"
AEsop's "Fables," The Bible, and Weems's "Life of Washington." In 1824
his father, in need of his assistance as a bread-winner, began to
instruct him in the carpenter trade. In 1825 he was employed at $6 a
month to manage a ferry across the Ohio River at Gentry's Landing, near
the mouth of Anderson Creek. His wages were paid to his father. The
first money he earned for himself came in the shape of two half-dollars
paid to him by two gentlemen whose trunks he transferred from the shore
to a passing steamer. In 1828 Mr. Gentry engaged him to go to New
Orleans on a flat-boat with a load of produce. In 1830 John Hanks, who
had removed from Kentucky to Illinois, wrote to Thomas Lincoln, urging
him to move to that State. Acting on the advice, Mr. Lincoln removed to
Illinois and settled at a point some ten miles west of Decatur. Abraham
Lincoln drove the ox team which hauled the household effects of the
family, and wearing a coon-skin cap, jean jacket, and a pair of buckskin
trousers, he entered the State poor, friendless, and unknown. Thirty
years later he left Illinois the foremost man in the nation, and known
to all the world. He assisted his father in clearing fifteen acres of
land, and split the rails with which to build the fence. Although of
age, he had no money, and having but a scant supply of clothing, made a
bargain with Nancy Miller to make him a pair of trousers. For each yard
of cloth required he split four hundred fence-rails, and as he was over
six feet in height it took fourteen hundred rails to pay for his
trousers. On April 19, 1831, he went to New Orleans with a flat-boat
load of pigs, corn, pork, and beef; the pigs refusing to walk, Lincoln
carried them aboard in his arms. John Hanks and Lincoln's half-brother,
John Johnston, accompanied him on the trip. While in New Orleans he
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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