• CHAPTER TWO •

KENTUCKY SCHOOL

Two years went by, all so run together in Abe Lincoln’s mind that afterwards he couldn’t tell which year was which. Dennis Hanks liked Knob Creek farm and came so often that he seemed like one of the Lincoln family. But he was not there on a chilly day early in 1815 when Thomas Lincoln arrived home with news.

“Schoolmaster Riney’s openin’ a school three miles up the pike,” he remarked.

“A school! Oh, Thomas!” Mrs. Lincoln exclaimed and her eyes sparkled joyfully. “The children kin go, kaint they?”

An old schoolhouse.

“I don’ know as they need schoolin’,” he replied. She watched him anxiously as he took off heavy shoes and stretched his feet to the fire. “I kaint read, ner write more’n my name, and I git along fine. What’s readin’ goin’ to git a person?”

“But Thomas, readin’s nice,” Mrs. Lincoln protested. “I al’ays wanted the children to learn to read.”

“Well, they’re goin’ t’ git their chance,” Lincoln said teasingly. “I’ve paid fer six weeks of schoolin’ for ’em already.”

“Abe an’ me go to school, Pappy?” Sarah exclaimed. Abe saw that his mother had flushed and looked happy, and smiled at her husband gratefully.

Mrs. Lincoln had to work hard to get them ready for school by Monday. Sarah needed a dress, and his mother made Abe his first pair of breeches. When he tried them on he paraded in front of the fire proudly, showing them off.

“They’re jes’ like Pappy’s!” he gloated. “Look, Sarah, I’ve got breeches like Pappy’s.” Sarah grinned, knowing that he had wanted man-clothes. The Lincoln children looked nice when their father took them to the new school.

At that time there were no public schools in Kentucky. Parents paid tuition in food or clothing or cash if they had any. Schoolmaster Riney taught a “blab school”—a name which meant that pupils “blabbed” (talked out loud while they memorized lessons) so that the teacher could know they were studying. The Knob Creek school was a shabby one-room cabin. A log left out of one wall let in light. Riney used Dilworth’s Spelling Book—the famous “Blue-Backed Speller”—and he stood over the dozen children, switch in hand, to make sure they worked. The room was full of sound, but Abe saw that Riney could not be fooled; he knew in a moment if a pupil stopped blabbing, and he went after that one with his switch.

When Sarah and Abe got home the first day their mother had hot pones ready for them and was eager to hear what they had learned. That night, after Abe had curled up under a buffalo skin he whispered the lesson, “a, b, c—” softly, so as not to waken his father.

“That you, Abe?” his mother whispered. “You sick?” “No, Mammy,” Abe replied, “jest sayin’ the lesson.”

She got up and covered him snugly. “You must learn hard whilst you have the chanct, Abe,” she said. “Learnin’s good!”

Sarah and Abe learned the alphabet, to spell a few words, and that two and two make four. Older children had writing lessons and used homemade quills and sumac-juice ink. Abe was just starting to make letters with a charcoal stick on a split log when the school closed. Children were needed at their homes for the spring work.

At the Knob Creek farm, Abe now rode the horse while his father held the bull-tongue plow to a straight furrow. Thomas Lincoln was doing well on this rich land. He now had four horses, a cow, pigs, and some sheep; a boy could help a lot caring for the animals. After the planting, Abe weeded the potato patch and chopped firewood.

“You larn to knock up kindlin’ fer yer mammy, and soon I’ll teach you to chop down a tree,” his father promised.

After the chores were done, Abe fished or looked for honey, berries, or nuts according to the season. The Kentucky woods furnished many kinds of food for people who would gather it.

Sarah had her chores, too. She set the table with wooden bowls and cups her father had made, and after the meal she washed them and put them away. Their few crockery dishes were kept on a higher shelf, for company use. Sarah polished the knives and the pewter forks and spoons with sand that Abe fetched from the creek; and she rubbed the copper kettle till it shone. She milked the cow and helped Abe pull weeds and knitted socks; and this year Mrs. Lincoln had taught her to card wool shorn from their own sheep.

The father and mother worked hard; making a living was a family enterprise. Thomas Lincoln planted fields and harvested. He hunted for game and took the corn to Hogden’s mill to be ground into meal. He built fences and a shelter for his stock, and in the winter he did carpentering jobs for neighbors.

Mrs. Lincoln sewed and cooked and spun and wove cloth on her loom. She was a good seamstress and clothes she made hung better than many “best” clothes worn to church. In her spare time she pieced a coverlet that looked nice on the bed, daytimes. She was a good cook and knew which herbs to gather in the woods to make a tasty stew.

Abe liked to watch her make corn pone. She mixed meal and water in a bowl and then molded the cakes between the palms of her hands. A quick press when it was shaped put a print of her palm on the cake—“Nancy’s print” she called it, smiling as she set the pones on the hearth to bake.

Corn pone is very similar to the skillet cornbread we eat today.

Afternoons, when her work was done and there was time before she must get supper, she took a splint-bottom chair outside and leaned against the cabin to rest. Sarah and Abe loved that hour. She sang to them or told tales about life in town. Some folks had slaves to do the work for them, she said, and fine clothes and a carriage to take them around. These stories did not make her or the children feel “poor”; they were just tales and fun to hear. People feel “rich” or “poor” in comparison with their neighbors. The Lincolns were comfortable enough according to standards around Knob Creek.

On stormy days Mrs. Lincoln rested by the fireplace. Often she took the small Bible from the shelf and read a story to the children. She read poorly. Abe liked it better when she found a place and a name to remind her and then told the story in her own words. Occasionally she was quiet and sad. Perhaps she grieved for the baby brother who was born and died before Abe could remember.

Life was not all work in Kentucky. The Lincolns had friends. People got together for house-raisings and cornhuskings and weddings and funerals, and most families went to church. The Lincolns belonged to the Little Mount Church a few miles away. Abe and his father rode one horse to meetings, and Sarah and her mother rode the other. Each summer there was a big camp meeting that lasted several days. Farmers put their stock into a fenced-in field and let the animals look after themselves. Camp meetings were noisy and jolly as well as religious; people needed that kind of a change after months on their lonely farms.

These Kentucky pioneers spoke a dialect of their own, though they called it English. The first of anything was the fust. Mr. Lincoln said, “The pigs air in the garden,” and Mrs. Lincoln told Sarah to be keerful when she washed crockery dishes. When Mr. Lincoln went to town he brung back things. Abe drapped seeds and went to school to be eddicated. Even the Lincoln name was pronounced and spelled many ways— Linkhorn, Linkern, Linkun. Pioneers were independent people; they talked as they pleased with no bother about a dictionary.

The only way Abe learned about the world beyond the hills was through the travelers who now and then stopped at the cabin to eat or to sleep. At such times the men talked by the fire. The names of people they mentioned were fascinating to hear—Napoleon, Astor, Boone, Tecumseh. Abe often said them over afterwards, relishing the sounds. Sometimes the men spoke of “the United States” and a “flag.”

“I got a flag of my own,” a visitor boasted one winter evening. He pulled a bit of cloth from under his shirt and proudly unfurled it. Abe saw that it was a pretty thing—red and white and blue with stars. “All eighteen stars, for eighteen states,” the owner pointed out. Eighteen was higher than Abe could count at that time.

The men talked about “freedom” and “slavery” and “Virginny”—and praised a young man from Kentucky, Henry Clay, who was making a name for himself, they said. Sometimes they talked in a worried way about “titles” and “surveys” and “taxes” and the “law.” These words interested Abe long before he knew the meanings. One night he heard his father say, “Well, I don’ need to worry none. I got title to my land and my taxes is paid.” The men said he was lucky.

Early in 1816 another school started, and Abe was glad to go. Maybe now he would learn the meaning of some of those words; his father never liked explaining. But that school closed too when planting time came. Dennis Hanks arrived the next week, and the annual round of work began again.

On an autumn evening of that year, 1816, Thomas Lincoln looked cross and weary when he returned from a trip to town. Abe helped him feed and bed the horse, but no word was spoken. His father didn’t notice the good supper, which the children ate with eager pleasure. He sat with drooping shoulders and cast occasional sad glances around the cheerful room.

Indiana farmland.

“This’s been a nice home,” he remarked presently.

“We like it right well,” his wife agreed, thinking to comfort him.

“But Kentuck’ ’s no place fer us,” Lincoln continued. “We ought ’er move.”

Abe was so astonished that he stopped chewing a mouthful of pone and honey. His mother waited anxiously.

“I bought my land here and thought my title was good,” Lincoln went on after a painful silence. “I paid my taxes and I’ve got my papers.” He scowled at his family as though they had made his misery. “And now I git a paper that says I’m a trespasser. I’m sued fer trespassin’ on my own land!”

“How could that be, Thomas?” His wife was puzzled.

“Seems like that’s the way it is in Kentuck’ now. In the early days settlers took land where they pleased—my own pappy did, Mordecai said. Land offices were a long way off—no tellin’ where. Then, like as not, a settler picked up and went on west. And maybe another man came and took that same land. Seems that a man’s come back here now and says my land was his’n. The lawyer says I’ve got a good claim ’cause I paid, and I could fight back. But I hain’t a-goin’ to—not when I’ve paid a’ready.” The three at the table watched him, puzzled by this mysterious tragedy.

“I heard today that in Indianny a man kin buy land straight from the government at two dollars an acre and no worry about a title—” Abe started to interrupt and his father said, “A title’s a paper that says a settler has a right to the land he paid fer, son, and it’s mighty important.

“I say I’m tired of frettin’. We should leave this farm! I’ll not stay here and fight fer the title. My brother Josiah moved to Indianny. If he kin, we kin. I say we move—what do you say, Nancy?” He turned to his wife eagerly.

“I’ll go wherever you go, Thomas,” Nancy Lincoln answered. “Now you eat—you’re wore out.”