. The library of American history, literature and biography .. . f the people,by the people, and for the peo-ple, shall not perish from theearth. Abraham Lincoln came intothe world in 1809, in a miserablehovel in Kentucky. His family were of that peculiar people, the shiftless, im-provident, poor whites of the South. The father, Thomas Lincoln, was atypical specimen of his class,—lazy, trifling, spending his life in the search of someplace in Kentucky, Indiana, or Illinois, where the rich soil would kindly yield itsfruits without the painful price of labor. Some three generations back, he trac
. The library of American history, literature and biography .. . f the people,by the people, and for the peo-ple, shall not perish from theearth. Abraham Lincoln came intothe world in 1809, in a miserablehovel in Kentucky. His family were of that peculiar people, the shiftless, im-provident, poor whites of the South. The father, Thomas Lincoln, was atypical specimen of his class,—lazy, trifling, spending his life in the search of someplace in Kentucky, Indiana, or Illinois, where the rich soil would kindly yield itsfruits without the painful price of labor. Some three generations back, he tracedhis ancestry to a Quaker origin in Pennsylvania ; but the thrift of that peacefulpeople was not entailed in the family, and if the energy and ability of the Vir-ginian grandfather who came with Boone into Kentucky was transmitted to thefuture President, certainly his father had it not. The mothers ancestry is un-known ; by courtesy she took her mothers name of Hanks. In youth she wasboth bright and handsome, and possessed of considerable intellectual force. LINCOLN S BOYHOOD HOME IN KENTUCKY. 632 BOYHOOD DAYS. She taught her husband to read, and it is fair to imagine that had her lot beenless sordid, her lite not ground down by labor and squalor and the vice abouther, she would have been fitted to adorn a higher sphere of life. Her son,though she died when he was in his tenth year, and though another womanfilled her place and deserved the love and devotion with which he repaid hergoodness, cherished the memory of his angel mother, testifying that to herhe owed all that he was or hoped to be. The story of Lincolns boyhood belongs to a stage of civilization which ourpeople have almost forgotten, or which they never knew. The removal toSpencer County, Indiana ; the half-faced camp in which the family lived ; thepride with which, a year later, they moved to a log cabin with dirt floor, andwithout doors or windows in the openings made for them ; the death of themother ; the boys
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