• CHAPTER THREE •

ACROSS THE WIDE OHIO

The next time Thomas Lincoln went to town he told friends he was leaving; soon he began to build a flatboat for his journey to Indiana. Abe went with him every day to the place where Knob Creek entered Rolling Fork, two and a half miles from the cabin, and there they worked on the boat until dark. A boy who was going on eight could help in many ways. He fetched tools; he learned to chop smaller branches from a tree trunk; and he could help drag a log and float it on the river. The boat was to be like a raft, with a light railing at the sides. When it was finished, Sarah and her mother helped carry things from the cabin: the cupboard, the plow, the tool chest, and other supplies for loading.

A farmhouse at the Coalins Forest and Game Reservation, between the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers in Kentucky.

On a bright autumn day, Thomas Lincoln poled away, alone. He would float down Rolling Fork, down Salt River, and to the Ohio; and then across to Indiana. When he had drifted out of sight, his family turned and walked home. It would be a long time before they could expect to see him again.

But the days went by quickly for Sarah and Abe. Several neighbors came to say good-bye—the Brownfields, the Gollahers, the Thompsons, the Ashcrafts, and others. Sarah helped her mother do a big washing—so bedding and clothing would be clean for the move. Abe gathered nuts and fished and kept the woodpile supplied. Mrs. Lincoln made a new quilt and packed her dishes in it and put them in a sack.

Then one afternoon, Thomas Lincoln stood at the door—so brown, so happy that he had not minded the long walk back to Knob Creek. Mrs. Lincoln hurried to get him a good supper, but the children asked so many questions he could hardly find time to eat it.

“Yes, I found us a place, Sarah,” he grinned at her.

“Yes, I had a fine trip, Abe.”

“Wait now, till yer pappy’s et,” Mrs. Lincoln told them, smiling at their eagerness. “Then he can tell it all.”

After supper they sat by the hearth to listen. Abe built a big fire; he was proud to show his father that there was plenty of wood handy. Then Thomas Lincoln told his story.

“I made out fine on Rollin’ Fork an’ Salt River—jest floatin’ an’ polin’ along easy,” he recounted. “But when I come to that Ohio—such a river as that is! The current was stronger than hit looked to be. My boat caught on a snag—er somethin’ —and next I knowed my tool chest, an’ yer cupboard, Nancy, had slid into the river.”

“Ye lost ’em, Pappy!” Abe exclaimed. Mrs. Lincoln’s face was suddenly white.

“Not me!” Lincoln laughed in a masterful way. “I waded in and fetched up everythin’. I was glad to git my tools—I’d hate to lose them.

“Finally I got across the Ohio and landed near Anderson’s Creek in Indianny. I left my things with a man named Francis Posey—he looked like a good man—and I set off to hunt us a farm.”

He talked all evening. The eager listeners inspired him to recall amusing incidents, which he told well. From Posey’s he had walked sixteen miles northwest along an old buffalo trail through deep forest. One day he came to a pretty knoll where the trees stood a little more apart.

“I knowed right off that was the place fer us,” Lincoln boasted proudly. “I’d carried my small ax so I notched trees and piled brush to mark the place. We’ll have a hundred an’ sixty acres, Nancy, and the government gives us time to pay fer hit. Thar’ll be a job, clearing fields fer corn, but the woods air full of game an’ the soil’s fine.’

“Kin we start tomorry?” Abe begged.

“You ready, Nancy?” Lincoln asked his wife. “I oughter git a shelter built before bitter weather sets in.”

“I need a day fer cooking up food,” Mrs. Lincoln reminded him. “We could start the mornin’ after.”

In the morning Lincoln butchered a hog, and busied himself packing the things they were to take with them. Mrs. Lincoln fried the hog meat and made a basketful of corn pones. The children helped to pack the saddlebags. That long-handled frying pan she called a “spider” was hard to fit in, but she couldn’t leave it behind. They were forced to discard many things they really needed.

At dawn the next day, early in December of 1816, the Lincoln family left Knob Creek farm. Abe and his father were to ride one horse and Sarah and her mother the other. But the loads were so heavy that the grownups walked most of the hundred-mile journey. At night they camped in the woods.

Abe stared incredulously when they reached the Ohio River—he had never seen so much water in his life. And something was going by all the time—uprooted trees, canoes, flatboats, one after the other! The Lincolns crossed safely on Thompson’s ferry and entered Indiana the same month it became a state in the Union.

That year, 1816, seemed to mark a change in the young United States, though at the time people didn’t suspect it. The wars for independence were over; new, vigorous leaders were replacing the men who had planned the republic and had written the Constitution. The acquisition of the Floridas and the vast undefined tract of land across the Mississippi River called “Louisiana” opened new vistas to Americans who had not satisfied their ambitions in the East. People were moving as never before in history, thousands of people—men, women, boys, and girls.

A wagon train of men, women, and children moving through the mountains.

Many left Europe and came to the United States to get more land and a chance to live a better life. Sailing ships were packed; and some of these immigrants crossed the mountains and then floated down the Ohio in their search for new homes. The river was the great highway to the West. It was easier for travel than the Great Lakes or the trip around the Gulf of Mexico. Few thought of stopping in Indiana at the time the Lincolns ferried over—the forests were thick and forbidding.

Not all people who moved came to the United States by their own wish. Black people were stolen and brought across the sea to be slaves. White people were kidnapped or tricked and found themselves “indentured servants”—doomed to work for years until their “time was up” and they had earned the high cost of their forced passage. Flatboats that drifted by Thompson’s ferry carried many kinds of people. Abe thought the river was interesting.

Thomas Lincoln found Mr. Posey, who greeted them cordially and loaned them a wagon with runners instead of wheels for their journey through the forest. Lincoln bought a cow, and Posey gave Abe a dog for company. Then he helped them load their things and wished them luck on the way.

Abe walked with his father, or ran ahead as his dog chased squirrels, ’possums, raccoons, and wild turkeys. The Lincolns had never seen such a forest. Elms, sycamores, white oaks, and beechnut, hickory, and walnut trees towered high. Thick vines twined from tree to tree, shutting out light even in the winter. Posey had warned them about panthers, bears, and wolves so they watched with anxious care.

On the third day they crossed pretty little Pigeon Creek.

“Better drink yer fill here,” Lincoln remarked. “I haint found water nigher our place yet.” So they drank and washed their hands and feet.

At the top of the next rise Lincoln paused. “Now yer on our land,” he said proudly. “I say we eat.”

They hurriedly unloaded some things. Each knew what to do. Lincoln killed a wild turkey; Abe built a fire; Sarah hunted a thin flat stone and put it to heat by the flames; and Mrs. Lincoln made corn pones with meal they had bought from Posey. It was wonderful to know that the long journey was ended.

The next morning Thomas Lincoln began to build their shelter. He planned a “half-faced camp,” the kind often used in sugar camps. First he selected two trees about fifteen feet apart east to west; and then he set a post some ten feet north of each tree. These four were the corner posts, which he connected with saplings. More saplings laid across made the support for the roof of piled-on brush. While he worked with posts and saplings, the others collected brush, enough for the roof and to pile around three sides. In front they would keep a fire going night and day, for heat and cooking and to keep off wild beasts. Often at night the terrifying shriek of a panther awakened them. Abe never forgot that sound nor their fear that some beast might prowl into their camp.

The Lincolns lived this way for nearly a year, and they were seldom comfortable. The fire used up wood fast, and it was Abe’s chore to keep plenty close by. North winds blew the heat away. South winds sent smoke and embers inside. But Thomas Lincoln had no time to build better; he had to clear a space in the forest for spring planting. This work was hardly begun when they discovered a new difficulty.

In the fall, when Lincoln had walked from Posey’s, he had seen many good springs; but now he couldn’t find one on his own land. He dug pits to hold snow or rain water, Mrs. Lincoln melted snow in the kettle, and the children filled pails at the spring. At first it was fun to see who could carry the most—but with the spring a mile away, the pleasure of that game didn’t last long. They simply learned to do with less water.

Life was easier when warmer weather came. The forest was beautiful with blossoms—wild crab, redbud, dogwood, and a ground covering of lavender phlox. Later Sarah picked buttercups and swamp lilies and iris near the creek; wild roses bloomed and honeysuckle scented the woods as in Kentucky. But by June, Abe had to keep a smoke fire going night and day to protect them from hordes of mosquitoes and flies.

Through all this the Lincolns had missed the help and company of Dennis Hanks, and it was a happy day when he arrived from Kentucky to stay. Work went faster now. Planting was finished, and more land was cleared. With logs from the trees he cut down, Lincoln started building a cabin.

After the 1817 harvest Lincoln went to Elizabethtown to collect payments due to him, and he brought back Mrs. Lincoln’s aunt and uncle, the Thomas Sparrows, and news of Kentucky. The title of his farm was not settled yet. New people were moving to Kentucky now. Henry Clay was sent to Congress again and was Speaker of the House—a high honor, townspeople had boasted. Deep in the forest, the Lincolns had little interest in such outside news. Small home happenings were more important.

The men hurried to roof the new cabin because the Sparrows were to live in the old camp until Uncle could build his cabin. Sarah and Abe marveled at the size of their new home. It was eighteen by twenty feet, larger than any cabin they had lived in. Lincoln built a loft overhead—reached by ladderlike pegs set in the wall—and Abe and Dennis slept there. The fireplace was wide, and the stick-and-mud chimney drew well. Someday they would have a floor and a door and a window. The Lincolns felt that they were doing well.

Then, suddenly, a mysterious and deadly illness appeared in the Pigeon Creek neighborhood. It was called “milksick” because both cows and people got it and died after a short illness. Thomas Sparrow and his wife died, and a few days later Mrs. Lincoln sickened. Sarah made broth—but her mother could not eat. Abe fetched fresh water—but she could not drink. Terror clutched them. They could not look at each other or speak. Abe could hardly swallow because of the great lump in his throat.

On a golden afternoon in October of 1818, Nancy Hanks Lincoln died. Abe felt numb, as though the whole world had suddenly stopped. His mother dead? The words his father spoke had no meaning to him.

Thomas Lincoln turned from the bedside and went outdoors. He got his saw and cut planks from a fine log that he had chosen for flooring in the new cabin. Dennis smoothed the boards and Abe silently whittled locust pegs for nails. When the coffin was made, Sarah lined it with the best coverlet, spreading it neatly as her mother would have liked. Together they buried Abe’s mother at the edge of the dark forest. And now there were three graves on that small knoll.

Abe Lincoln was nine at this time—going on ten. He had loved his mother dearly and without her he was very lonely.