ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER I.

A CHAOTIC BEGINNING.

The Traditions of the Family-A Kentucky Tragedy-The Romance of Pioneer Life.

It is due to the working of a strong and subtle instinct of the human race that the first forms of historical record, traditional or written, have consisted largely of efforts to discover or invent the genealogies of prominent men. The difficulties which always have attended such researches are perfectly presented in all efforts to follow or verify the eccentric driftings of the families who first made settlements for themselves upon. the Atlantic shore of what is now the United States.

Patiently and zealously, year after year, plodding workers have dug out and set in order the attainable records and traditions of the Lincoln family, until a certain series, sufficiently sustained, can be presented with much probability of truth.

The methodical New England annals establish the fact that Samuel Lincoln, from Norwich, England, was settled at Hingham, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in the year 1638. His son, Mordecai, appears to have continued in residence at Hingham, but a second Mordecai, his grandson, removed to Monmouth, New Jersey, and owned property there. He again removed to Amity township, in what is now Bucks County,

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Pennsylvania. When he died there, somewhere near the year 1735, the Lincoln family in America was a century old, but was still possessed by the same restless, pioneer spirit which had brought its founder from England to Massachusetts.

There is no evidence that he was a Quaker, as were some of his immediate descendants, but their religious persuasion offers a sufficient reason for their departure from New England, ruled as it then was, and for their seeking a home in Pennsylvania. With that generation, however, so far as the best known part of them is concerned, all traces of the non-resistant Quaker spirit or character faded out. John Lincoln, son of Mordecai, inherited from him a good property in New Jersey, but moved to Rockingham County, Virginia.

One of the trustees named in Mordecai's will was his "loving friend and neighbor, George Boone." The Boone and Lincoln families were also related by marriage; and when a part of the Boones transferred their pioneer work to Virginia and North Carolina, they drew John and other Lincolns with them. The latter were now becoming numerous, and there is here and there curious evidence that some of the scattered branches of the family tree preserved or adopted one of the several traditions of the origin of the family name and called themselves Linkhorn.

The first evening light of the early Saxons, as of all other rude peoples, was a torch or "link." The first improvement made upon the torch was the protection of its flame and light with plates of thin horn, such as sometimes served for window panes instead of glass. The primitive lanterns, therefore, were linkhorns, from which the maker or the bearer could easily borrow a name for himself. It was natural that this, like so many other names, should shorten in use before the time of its reduction to writing, and that then the spelling should follow the accustomed sound.

It is not so easy to explain, however, how the original form should reappear after what seems to have been so long a disuse.

From the settlement of John Lincoln in Virginia, the history of his branch of the family becomes more distinct and trustworthy. The growth and development of the colony of which he had become a citizen had, down to this time, been barred by the central mountain ranges, but the Old Dominion claimed a vast and vaguely bounded realm beyond them. That part of it which lay south of the Ohio and was sometimes spoken of as "the Kentucky woods," was as yet an unexplored wilderness.

It so remained until it was opened to settlement through the daring and stubborn perseverance of the Boone family and their associates, under the leadership of Daniel Boone. The tragical and romantic story of their exploits is plainly related to the fact that no less than three of the five sons of John Lincoln followed them, at different dates and to different places in the new domain. Still, it was eleven years after the first explorations of Daniel Boone, in 1769, before Abraham, the elder son of John Lincoln, became a Kentucky pioneer. He took with him a wife whom he had married in North Carolina and several children. The first entry of land made by him was a tract of four hundred acres on Long Run, a branch of Floyd's Fork, in what is now Jefferson County. He afterwards made other purchases and entries, until he was the owner of no less than seventeen hundred acres, and was a man of substance even in a day when wild lands were selling at very low prices. The land-warrants and official surveys still in existence show that he, or those who spelled for him perhaps, according to pronunciation, went back to the primitive form and wrote the name "Linkhorn."

If the first Abraham Lincoln had been permitted to continue the work which he began with so much courage and enterprise, the after-course of his family might have been altogether different. They were indeed compelled to endure all the ordinary privations and hardships of settler-life in the backwoods, but there were many compensations, for Americans thoroughly

imbued with the pioneer spirit. They had before them a fair prospect of growing up with the country, and of sharing all the prosperities of its sure development. They were also compelled, however, to face the perils and vicissitudes of the long, bloody struggle with the red men for their hunting grounds.

In the year 1786, the father of the family, with his two sons, 1 Mordecai and Josiah, were at work near the edge of a clearing which they had begun upon the land which they had bought from the government. They were not far from their cabin and were accompanied by the younger son, Thomas, a child of seven. A shot rang out in the underbrush near them, the father fell to the ground, and all the fair future vanished. An Indian warrior sprang forth to secure the scalp of his victim. Josiah set out at once to the nearest fort, Hughes Station, to obtain assistance. Mordecai ran to the cabin for a rifle and thrust it through a loophole just as the savage was raising little Thomas from the ground. There was a white medal on the red man's breast for a mark, and Mordecai's aim was fatally true. Little Thomas escaped to the cabin. Other savages made their appearance, but Mordecai plied his rifle and succeeded in keeping them off until help came.

This is the substance of the several accounts of the disastrous change in the story of the Lincoln family settlement in Kentucky. It was but one of the countless bloody marks upon the western frontier, the ever-advancing skirmish-line of American civilization. The widowed mother of the family was compelled to give up the clearing which had cost so much, and to remove to a safer home in Washington County.

CHAPTER II.

INTO THE BACKWOODS.

From Kentucky to Indiana-A Voyage of Discovery-The Half-faced Camp.

THE Kentucky settlements grew rapidly, although many treaties with the Indian tribes failed to prevent an all but ceaseless peril of savage inroads.

Mrs. Lincoln brought up her family of two daughters and three sons, under somewhat more than the ordinary disadvantages of pioneer life. Josiah and Mordecai became independent farmers, but it is related that, to his dying day, the latter maintained a reputation as a relentless and successful Indian-fighter. The daughters grew to maturity and married, one becoming Mrs. Krume and the other Mrs. Bromfield.

The third son, Thomas, the child rescued by his brave. brother's rifle from the knife of the Indian warrior, developed a character by no means uncommon among rural communities. He was a man of great physical strength, although but little above middle height, and muscular prowess counted for much among the backwoodsmen of Kentucky. He was entirely unlettered, by force of circumstances, as were the great majority of the people among whom he lived. Unlike many of them, however, he seemed destitute of enterprise. He had no ambition and seemed contented to go through life as an easy-going, kindly, jovial man, without especial aim or calling, and with little or no idea of rising in the world. It was a matter of course that such a man should drift from one employment into another, and from place to place, without attaining prosperity in any. In the course of time he became a resident of