of the New Salem Literary Club, became an orator of immortal fame. The rail-splitter of the Sangamon became the most honored and respected man of his generation.

Such men are not accidents. The strength of a structure depends upon the material used and the treatment it has received. Poor material may be improved and good material is often spoiled in the making; but only when the pure metal has passed through the fire and the forge is it fit to sustain a severe strain. Thus Abraham Lincoln, unconscious of his destiny, by the struggles and privations of his early life was qualified for the task to which Infinite Wisdom had assigned him.

Abraham Lincoln's father was descended from Samuel Lincoln, who emigrated from the west of England a few years after the landing of the Pilgrims and settled at the village of Hingham, on the south shore of Massachusetts Bay, between Boston and Plymouth. Eight men bearing that name came over on the same ship and are supposed to have been related. An army of their descendants is scattered over the Union. One of them, Samuel Lincoln, left a large family which has produced several prominent figures besides a President of the United States. One of his grandsons in the third generation, Levi Lincoln, was recognized for a generation as the leader of the New England bar. He was Secretary of State and Attorney-General in the Cabinet of President Jefferson, a member of the Legislature of Massachusetts, and one of the ablest and most influential men of his day.

The fourth son of Samuel Lincoln, Mordecai, I, acquired wealth as a manufacturer. His eldest son, who inherited his name, moved to Berks County, Pennsylvania, and had a son named John, who took up a tract of land in Virginia about the year 1760, where, like the rest of his name, he raised a large family. John Lincoln, II, his second son, became prominent in public

affairs, and was a member of the Convention that framed the first Constitution of the State of Pennsylvania.

On July 10, 1760, Abraham, I, the third of the five sons of John Lincoln, II, married Anna Boone, a cousin of Daniel Boone, the most famous of American pioneers, and his father gave him a farm in the Shenandoah Valley. By frequent intermarriages between the Boones and the Lincolns they were closely allied. By the will of Mordecai Lincoln, II, his "loving friend and neighbor George Boone" was made executor of his estate and Squire Boone, father of the celebrated Daniel, was appointed to make an inventory of the property. Hananiah Lincoln was a partner of Daniel Boone in the purchase of a tract of land on the Missouri River in 1798, and it was there that the great woodsman died.

The name Abraham was a favorite among the Lincoln family. It occurs frequently in their genealogy. A young man named Abraham Lincoln distinguished himself for courage and brutality on the Confederate side during the Civil War. He killed a Dunkard preacher whom he suspected of furnishing information to the Union army. The Union President received

several letters of offensive tone from his kinsman in the South during the earlier part of his administration.

The farm of Abraham Lincoln, I, in the Shenandoah Valley, was on the great national highway along which the course of empire took its westward way, and, infected by continual contact with the emigrants and encouraged by the greatest of American pioneers, he sold the property his father had given him, packed his wife and five children into a Conestoga wagon, and followed the great migration until it led him to what is now Hughes Station, Jefferson County, Kentucky, where he entered a large tract of land and paid for it one hundred and sixty pounds "in current money." The original warrant, dated March 4, 1780, is still in existence. By the blunder of a clerk in the Land Office the name was

misspelled Linkhorn, and Abraham, I, was too careless or busy to correct it, for it appears that way in all the subsequent records. Hananiah Lincoln, the partner of Daniel Boone, furnished the surveyor's certificate.

Four years later, in the spring of 1784, occurred the first tragedy in the annals of the Lincoln family. Abraham, I, with his three sons, were at work clearing ground upon his farm when they were attacked by a wandering squad of Indians. The first shot from the brush killed the father. Mordecai, III, the eldest son, started to the house for his rifle; Josiah ran to the neighbors for assistance, leaving Thomas, a child of six, alone with his father. After Mordecai had recovered his rifle he saw an Indian in war-paint appear upon the scene, examine the dead body of his father, and stoop to raise the lad from the ground. Taking deliberate aim at a white ornament that hung from the neck of the savage, he brought him down and his little brother escaped to the cabin. The Indians began to appear in the thicket, but Mordecai, shooting through the loopholes of the cabin, held them off until Josiah returned with reinforcements.

From circumstantial evidence we must infer that Anna Lincoln was a poor manager, or perhaps she suffered from some misfortune. All we know is that she abandoned the farm in Jefferson County and moved south into the neighboring county of Washington, where she disappears from human knowledge. Her eldest son, Mordecai, III, appears to have inherited his father's money, as the rules of primogeniture prevailed in those days. He was sheriff of Washington County, a member of the Kentucky Legislature, and tradition gives him. the reputation of an honorable and influential citizen. Late in life he removed to Hancock County, Illinois, where he died and is buried. Josiah, the second son, crossed the Ohio River and took up a homestead in what is now called Harrison County, Indiana. Mary,

the eldest daughter, married Ralph Crume, and Nancy, the fourth child, married William Brumfield. Their descendants are still found in Hardin, Washington, and other counties in that neighborhood.

Explanations are wanting for the circumstance that Thomas, the youngest son and brother of this prosperous family, whose father was slain before his eyes when he was only six years old, was turned adrift, without home or care, for at ten years of age we find him "a wandering, laboring boy" who was left uneducated and supported himself by farm work and other menial employment, and learned the trades of carpenter and cabinet-maker. But he must have had good stuff in him, for when he was twenty-five years old he had saved enough from his wages to buy a farm in Hardin County. Local tradition, which, however, cannot always be trusted, represents him to have been "an easy going man, and slow to anger, but when 'roused a formidable adversary." He was above the medium height, had a powerful frame, and, like his immortal son, had a wide. local reputation as a wrestler.

While learning his trade in the carpenter shop of Joseph Hanks, Thomas Lincoln married Nancy Hanks, his own cousin, and the niece of his employer. He probably met her at the house of Richard Berry, with whom she lived, and must have seen a good deal of her at the home of her uncle. At all events, the cousins became engaged; their nuptial bond was signed according to the law on June 10, 1806, and two days later they were married by the Rev. Jesse Head, at the home of Richard Berry, near Beechland, Washington County, Kentucky.

Nancy Hanks was descended from William Hanks, who came to this country in 1699 and settled at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Four of his five sons moved to Amelia County, Virginia, where they had a large tract of land. One of their descendants, Joseph Hanks, married Nancy Shipley, and in 1789 moved to Kentucky

with a large party of his relatives. In 1793 he died, leaving eight children, who were scattered among their relatives, and Nancy, the youngest, when nine years old, found a home with her aunt, Lucy Shipley, the wife of Richard Berry. She is represented to have been a sweet-tempered and handsome woman, of intellect, appearance, and character superior to her position; and could even read and write, which was a remarkable accomplishment among the women of that day. She taught her husband to write his name. But she had no means whatever, being entirely dependent upon her uncle, and it is probable that she was willing to marry even so humble a husband as Thomas Lincoln, for the sake of securing independence and a home.

Thomas Lincoln took his wife to a little log cabin in a hamlet called Elizabethtown, probably because he thought that it would be more congenial for her than his lonely farm in Hardin County, which was fourteen miles away; and perhaps he thought that he could earn a better living by carpenter work than by farming. Here their first child, Sarah, was born about a year after the marriage.

Thomas Lincoln either failed to earn sufficient money to meet his household expenses or grew tired of his carpenter work, for, two years later, he left Elizabethtown and moved his family to his farm near Hodgensville, on the Big South Fork of Nolen Creek. It was a miserable place, of thin, unproductive soil and only partly cleared. Its only attraction was a fine spring of water, shaded by a little grove, which caused it to be called "Rock Spring Farm." The cabin was of the rudest sort, with a single room, a single window, a big fireplace, and a huge outside chimney.

In this cabin Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, and here he spent the first four years of his childhood. It was a far reach to the White House. Soon after his nomination for the Presidency he fur