of twenty-three, of appearance and intellect superior to her lowly
fortunes. She could read and write,--a remarkable accomplishment in
her circle,--and even taught her husband to form the letters of his
name. He had no such valuable wedding gift to bestow upon her; he
brought her to a little house in Elizabethtown, where he and she and
want dwelt together in fourteen feet square. The next year a daughter
was born to them; and the next the young carpenter, not finding his
work remunerative enough for his growing needs, removed to a little
farm which he had bought on the easy terms then prevalent in Kentucky.
It was on the Big South Fork of Nolin Creek, in what was then Hardin
and is now La Rue County, three miles from Hodgensville. The ground
had nothing attractive about it but its cheapness. It was hardly more
grateful than the rocky hill slopes of New England. It required full
as earnest and intelligent industry to persuade a living out of those
barren hillocks and weedy hollows, covered with stunted and scrubby
underbrush, as it would amid the rocks and sands of the northern
coast.

Thomas Lincoln settled down in this dismal solitude to a deeper
poverty than any of his name had ever known; and there, in the midst
of the most unpromising circumstances that ever witnessed the advent
of a hero into this world, Abraham Lincoln was born on the 12th day of
February, 1809.

Four years later, Thomas Lincoln purchased a fine farm of 238 acres on
Knob Creek, near where it flows into the Rolling Fork, and succeeded
in getting a portion of it into cultivation. The title, however,
remained in him only a little while, and after his property had passed
out of his control he looked about for another place to establish
himself.