been the theme of endless wrangling among Western physicians, and the
difficulty of ascertaining anything about it has been greatly
increased by the local sensitiveness which forbids any one to admit
that any well-defined case has ever been seen in his neighborhood,
"although just over the creek (or in the next county) they have had it
bad." It seems to have been a malignant form of fever--attributed
variously to malaria and to the eating of poisonous herbs by the
cattle--attacking cattle as well as human beings, attended with
violent retching and a burning sensation in the stomach, often
terminating fatally on the third day. In many cases those who
apparently recovered lingered for years with health seriously
impaired. Among the Pioneers of Pigeon Creek, so ill-fed, ill-housed,
and uncared for, there was little prospect of recovery from such a
grave disorder. The Sparrows, husband and wife, died early in October,
and Nancy Hanks Lincoln followed them after an interval of a few days.
Thomas Lincoln made the coffins for his dead "out of green lumber cut
with a whipsaw," and they were all buried, with scant ceremony, in a
little clearing of the forest. It is related of young Abraham, that he
sorrowed most of all that his mother should have been laid away with
such maimed rites, and that he contrived several months later to have
a wandering preacher named David Elkin brought to the settlement, to
deliver a funeral sermon over her grave, already white with the early
winter snows. [Footnote: A stone has been placed over the site of the
grave "by P. E. Studebaker, of South Bend, Indiana." The stone bears
the following inscription: "Nancy Hanks Lincoln, mother of President
Lincoln, died October 5th, A. D. 1818, aged 35 years. Erected by a
friend of her martyred son, 1879."]

This was the dreariest winter of his life, for before the next
December came his father had brought from Kentucky a new wife, who was