Thomas Lincoln, Dennis Hanks--married to one of Lincoln's
step-sisters--and Levi Hall, thirteen persons in all. They sold land,
cattle, and grain, and much of their household goods, and were ready
in March of 1830 for their journey. All the possessions which the
three families had to take with them were packed into a big wagon--the
first one Thomas Lincoln had ever owned, it is said--to which four
oxen were attached, and the caravan started. The weather was still
cold, the streams were swollen, and the roads were muddy, but the
party started out bravely. Inured to hardships, alive to all the new
sights on their route, every day brought them amusement and
adventures, and especially to young Lincoln the journey must have been
of keen interest. He drove the oxen on this trip, he tells us, and,
according to a story current in Gentryville, he succeeded in doing a
fair peddler's business on the route. Captain William Jones, in whose
father's store Lincoln had spent so many hours in discussion and in
story-telling, and for whom he had worked the last winter he was in
Indiana, says that before leaving the State Abraham invested all his
money, some thirty-odd dollars, in notions. Though the country through
which they expected to pass was but sparsely settled, he believed he
could dispose of them. "A set of knives and forks was the largest item
entered on the bill," says Mr. Jones; "the other items were needles,
pins, thread, buttons, and other little domestic necessities. When the
Lincolns reached their new home, near Decatur, Illinois, Abraham wrote
back to my father, stating that he had doubled his money on his
purchases by selling them along the road. Unfortunately we did not
keep that letter, not thinking how highly we would have prized it
years afterwards."

The pioneers were a fortnight on their journey. The route they took we
do not exactly know, though we may suppose that it would be that by