The young Abe Lincoln slept on a dirt floor in a one room cabin in Kentucky and Indiana. He and his younger sister walked to school, nine miles through the forest each way.
They had one book, the family Bible, which Abe loved to hear stories from. It was the primary entertainment in the evenings.
I recently started a six-volume 1923 biography of Abraham Lincoln, a gift to my maternal great grandfather from the author, Carl Sandburg, and was struck by the similarities of young Lincoln’s lifestyle and that of my own ancestors. Abe was a contemporary of my fourth great grandfather William Arnold, who also lived an austere lifestyle in both Kentucky and Indiana.
Artist’s depiction of William Arnold. (Andrew Wilkie)
Like Abe’s grandfather, also named Abraham Lincoln, William’s grandfather James Arnold staked out a few hundred acres in the mountains of Southwest Virginia before both families migrated to Kentucky in the late 1700s. (Abe’s grandfather was killed outside the cabin in Virginia by Indians when his son, Abe’s father, was a toddler. No image exists of the first Abe Lincoln.)
Depiction of James Arnold by Gordon Wetmore, based on composite of descendants.
Abe’s father Tom Lincoln could sign his name, as could William and James Arnold. But some Lincolns could only sign their “mark.” This was also true of James Arnold’s father, Stephen Arnold, who was apparently illiterate, but sophisticated enough to acquire 2,000 acres of the Virginia frontier in exchange for being the only buffer between Indians and colonialists.
Learning the details of the Lincoln family on the frontier felt, to me, like reading the life of my own ancestors.
Tom Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s father.
The first farm Tom Lincoln found for his family in Kentucky had a nice creek, but the land didn’t grow crops very well. So he sold it for 25 barrels of whiskey, and the family trudged along to the new farm in Indiana with two horses and a cart and flatboat carrying the whiskey which would serve as the currency to purchase the new farm. Crossing a river caused the flatboat to flip and Tom nearly lost his entire estate, but he was able to recover most of the barrels. Across the river, they traveled many more miles with the help of two horses, but Tom and his wife Nancy often walked when the horses tired.. Their trek was 50 miles as the crow flies until they reached their new homestead. Since they were not crows, the winding trail continued 100 miles around creeks, hills, timbers, and rivers. They arrived at their new acreage when Abe was eight.
For a year, they lived in a leanto with one side completely open to the elements. When the log cabin was finally built, the one room structure had no window and only a half door to stoop through. Even then, rains and winds were a problem. Abe slept on corn husks with a bear rug for years, as bedding was not available.
He and his sister assisted the effort. Children by age seven, even five, were a crucial component to homesteading, gathering berries, wild grapes, grinding corn, pulling weeds, fetching water. It was often feast or famine. On a day too cold, certain cows might freeze to death. Food could abound or consist of nothing but potatoes. In good times they enjoyed bread, chickens, ducks, roast beef and cabbage, beans, baked custard, pudding, and pies. Tom hunted bear, deer, turkey, coons, partridges and rabbits and from these skins they made shirts, trousers, mocassins, and caps.
Reproduction of young Abe Lincoln and their family’s log cabin.
After much struggle, Abe’s mother died when he was ten. His aunt and uncle nearby both died a month earlier of the same disease, the “white fever.” Tom had a small interest in religion but not much. Nancy was devout. She also won the battle with Tom over Abe’s future, insisting he pursue a “real education” which Tom thought was a waste of time.
A few months later, Tom Lincoln, who must have known like most settlers the impossibility of raising a family without a spouse, went into his old town one day to find one. It was just like the scene in “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.” He found a girl he knew growing up and asked her to marry him and return with him to Indiana. She said yes and they left the next day. Upon arrival, Abe received a new step brother and two sisters along with his first bit of bedding.
Like today, those who worked hardest wondered if they would lose the fruits of their labor to sophisticated elites. Tom Lincoln’s father worked a parcel he thought he had owned, only to later learn a lawyer and speculator back east had secured rights to the property. Tom was forced to defend himself in court on a number of occasions, and these challenges played a role in his son Abraham sensing the need for legal training.
The Lincolns, though mostly Scots-Irish, had a strain of Quaker in them that caused them to act only “as the spirit of the heart moved.” The people of that day used almost exclusively Christian names. Abraham's grandmother was Bathsheba. Her sons were Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas. A local grand jury only issued one report a certain year, indicting a man for “profane swearing.” Another year, a defendant got a second trial because during deliberations the jury “did eat, drink, fiddle, and dance.”
Depiction of Nancy Lincoln, Abe’s mother.
Besides the Bible, evening entertainment might be singing old ballads by the fire. Nancy would sing to Abe about Wicked Polly who danced and ran wild and told the old folks, “I’ll turn to God when I get old, and He will then receive my soul.” But when death struck Polly down while she was still young, she cried to her mother, “When I am dead, remember well, your wicked Polly screams in hell."
My own ancestors—from Stephen Arnold on the Virginia frontier in the mid 1700s to my father Jack Arnold—chose, unlike Abe Lincoln, to continued farming for generations. They did not advance as quickly into higher education and sophisticated circles like the famous President. Farming and homesteading continued for each successive Arnold from Virginia and Kentucky to Indiana, Iowa, Oklahoma, Arizona until the westward drive was forced to end at the Pacific Ocean in Anaheim, California.
William Henry Arnold moved from Iowa to Oklahoma, Clarence from Oklahoma and Arizona until the ocean stopped him. Cliff’s saxophone is just viewable. His son Jack moved all the way back to the original Arnold settlement.
My grandfather Cliff Arnold, also blocked by the ocean, was the first to venture beyond homesteading. He led a jazz band in the Roaring Twenties, then finally settled down and owned a furniture store and retired early. His son, my father Jack Arnold, made a move as steep as Lincoln’s into law and earned a doctorate in theology from Dallas Theological Seminary and moved to Roanoke, Virginia for the longest pastorate of his career, the town where I grew up. Ironically, it was located 30 minutes from where his earliest known ancestor, Stephen Arnold, put his stake in the ground on the Virginia frontier in 1742, an area near Lexington, Virginia known as Arnold’s Valley.
Portrait of Stephen Arnold by Gordon Wetmore, from composite of descendants.
As the family genealogist, I did not make the connection until we had all moved away. My mother had suggested the possibility when we lived there, but I thought the idea too fanciful. I have visited those original acres many times, which include a two story brick home built by Stephen and James Arnold in 1770 (still standing), and the foundation of the original cabin on the side of the mountain first built by Stephen in 1742.
What were their lives like? A lot like the Lincolns.'
Arnold’s Valley, Virginia. The site of the original cabin we discovered is located at the red dot.