development of that nobility and purity which his wonderful character afterward displayed," he grew up among cultured men and women, who helped to lay the foundation for him upon which it was possible to build a pure and noble life. Perhaps Mr. Lamon should not be subjected "to the charge of being inspired by an antagonistic animus," but he should be and is subjected to the charge that he did not know Lincoln in the making and never made any real effort to find out the facts about his early life. One of the latest and best writers on the life of Abraham Lincoln is Rev. William E. Barton. But even he has failed to grasp the environment of Lincoln in Indiana, for he says: "On this farm in the backwoods in the Pigeon Creek settlement, with eight or ten families as neighbors, and with the primitive village of Gentryville a mile and a half distant, Abraham Lincoln grew to manhood. Excepting for a brief experience as a ferryman on the Ohio River and a trip to New Orleans which he made upon a flatboat, his horizon was bounded by this environment from the time he was eight until he was twenty-one."5 CHAPTER VI ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S SCHOOLING IN KENTUCKY "And weary seekers of the best, We come back laden from our quest, Is in the Book our mothers read." -Whittier. When Abraham Lincoln was four years old he attended his first school, in Kentucky. His attendance was for a very short time and it is said he went merely to accompany his sister Sarah. His teacher was Zachariah Riney. Abe was seven years old when he attended his next school which was kept by Caleb Hazel.1 Years later, speaking of his schooling in Kentucky, Lincoln said that he and his sister Sarah "were sent for short periods to A, B, C schools. . . . The schoolhuse was about two miles from the Lincoln home; it was a log house fifteen feet square. It is still standing but not as it was when Sarah and Abraham attended, for it is now a part of a comfortable farm house. The slowly accumulating evidence proves that both Riney and Hazel were far better teachers than the scant recorded material in Lincoln's biographies shows. Mr. John J. Barry, editor of Rolling Fork Echo, New Haven, Kentucky, says that Riney was a man of considerable culture, "a gentleman," who taught manners and morals in his school. Mr. Riney was a Catholic, members of that church being numerous in that part of Kentucky at that time. One of these Catholic communities was only eight miles away from the Lincoln home, near New Haven. It is now Gethsemane monastery. There was another Catholic community eighteen miles away at Bardstown. In these communities lived many fine, cultured people and one of these was Lincoln's school teacher. We may feel sure that Thomas and Nancy Lincoln came in contact with them more or less as they passed back and forth upon the highway. Who knows but that from these Godly people Nancy Lincoln received a great vision of a great life and transmitted it to her son, whose mind at that time was "wax to receive and marble to retain," when he kneeled at her side during the long winter evenings by the fireside as she poured out to him the stories of the Bible. Caleb Hazel, Lincoln's school teacher, owned a farm adjoining the Lincoln's and was their friend and neighbor. It used to be said that Sister Melania (Buckman) of the Sisters of Nazareth, who was related to the Lincoln family, was Abe's first teacher. The fact that the Lincoln farm was so far from her habitation made the story look impossible, but since Rev. Mr. Barton has shown that Lincoln's youth was spent not on that farm but this side Muldraugh's hill, the difficulty that militated against this tradition has been removed. If she had merely taught him to count five, or to recite A and B and C, that fact would have justified the recital. No one can say that it is not true. It is in possession. We may feel quite safe in saying that the amount of learning secured by little Abe in the Kentucky schools was very slight. He, perhaps, learned the alphabet and a few pages of Webster's Elementary Spelling Book and was able to write out the words he spelled. Among Lincoln's fellow pupils at the school of Zachariah Riney was John B. Hutchins, who later became a Catholic priest; and perhaps Hutchins's half-brother, later the Rev. Charles D. Bowlin of the Order of St. Dominic. Father Hutchins became a celebrated educator and lived until February 9, 1873; yet about the only recollection he left us of his school mate is that the child's name was then pronounced Link-horn. Young children's names are even today sometimes mispronounced at school both by pupils and by teachers. Samuel Haycraft was a schoolmate of Abraham Lincoln when they attended Caleb Hazel's school. Speaking of Mr. Hazel, Mr. Haycraft in 1866 said: "He perhaps could teach spelling and reading and indifferent writing, and possibly could cipher to the rule of three. . . . Abe was a mere spindle of a boy, had his due proportion of harmless mischief, but as we lived in a country abounding in hazel switches, in the virtue of which the master had great faith, Abe of course received his due allowance."2 Mr. Charles C. Coffin says that Austin Gollaher, who attended school in Kentucky with Lincoln, informed him that Riney and Hazel had only a spelling book containing spelling words and easy lessons in reading. When the advanced pupils had finished the book they would start over again. IN INDIANA In Indiana, it is believed, Lincoln attended different sessions of school, scattered over a period of years, the first when he was ten years of age, the second when he was fourteen, and the third when he was seventeen. He went to school "by littles" and altogether for not more than a year. In his autobiography written in 1860 Lincoln said he went to schools in Indiana kept by Andrew Crawford,Sweeney, and Azel W. Dorsey but that he did not remember any others. But Mr. Charles T. Baker, editor of the Grand View, Indiana, Monitor, believes that Mr. Lincoln had other teachers in the Hoosier State, including James H. Brown, William Price, John Prosser, and John W. Crooks. The Indiana schools were know as "blab" schools. The name was entirely appropriate for the pupils were compelled to study their lessons aloud. This studying aloud was a pedagogical device used by the teacher to see that each pupil was kept at work. It was also used because of the scarcity of textbooks-the teacher read the lesson aloud and then had the pupils recite it after him. In early colonial days that was the way the songs were sung in the churches. As there was but one hymn book, the minister or deacon would read a line of the song and the congregation would sing it; then another line was read and sung, and so on until the song was finished. It is more than likely that Abe never owned a school textbook of his own while in school and that his voice was among those of the "blab" school following the teacher. But he did more than merely repeat the words; he thought out their meaning; he pondered over them; he committed to memory the choice selections that appealed to him. Through his entire life Lincoln read aloud. When he prepared his speeches he recited them over and over again-a habit acquired in the "blab" schools in Indiana.3 |