Kentucky During Lincoln's Early Years

Kentucky in 1809

	Postcard depicting the cabin where Abraham Lincoln was born

In 1809, Kentucky was very much a rural state, with thousands of small farms. The state contained a large population of tenant farmers, who didn’t own the land on which they worked. Land titles could be unclear and many a person who thought they owned a tract, like Thomas Lincoln, came out on the wrong end of a legal decision concerning ownership. In 1811, the Lincolns left their 348-acre Sinking Spring Farm, where they had lived since December 1808, and moved to nearby Knob Creek. It was here, on the Knob Creek farm, that young Abraham formed his earliest memories. Settlement at this time was concentrated in the Bluegrass Region of Kentucky, but the Green River country and the Appalachian Region were increasing in population. Far western Kentucky – the Jackson Purchase – was still Indian land and not open to settlement. Major towns included Lexington, Frankfort, Louisville, Maysville, and Danville.

	Sketch of a flat bottom boat from Collot's Journey in North America, 1826

Following the same migratory and pioneering spirit of his ancestors and thousands of others, Thomas Lincoln moved his family again in 1816. Unclear title to the Knob Creek farm and an apparent growing repugnance to slavery were two of Lincoln’s primary motives. With this move, the family left Kentucky, crossing the Ohio River to southern Indiana where they settled on a farm near present Dale. It was there, in 1818, that Abraham Lincoln’s mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, died. In 1830, when Lincoln was twenty-one years old, the family moved farther west to Illinois, in search yet again of a better life. Thus, the Lincolns serve as an excellent example of the frequency of mortality and movement so prevalent in frontier Kentucky as well as America.

How much of this family and personal experience shaped the future President can be debated. Lincoln himself believed those early years in Kentucky were important in making him who he was. So much so, that many years later, on the eve of becoming President, he reminded the citizens of his native state that “I, too, am a Kentuckian.”