In 1788, Sarah Bush was born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.  In 1806, she married Daniel Johnston, but he died ten years later.  It is likely that Sarah had known Thomas Lincoln when he lived in Elizabethtown before marrying Nancy Hanks.  Some scholars have indicated that Lincoln had courted her before she married Johnston.  When Nancy Lincoln died in 1818, Thomas realized that his children needed a mother, and he returned to Kentucky from Indiana, where they lived.  In 1819, he married Sarah Johnston, who soon developed a close relationship with Thomas’s son, Abraham.  After Lincoln moved away from his parents’ home in 1831, he remained close with his stepmother despite his cool relationship with his father.  After Thomas Lincoln died in 1851, Abraham provided financial assistance for Sarah.  Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln died in Coles County, Illinois, on April 12, 1869.

Lowell H. Harrison, Lincoln of Kentucky (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000).