The Grave of Abraham Linkhorn and the Story That Followed.

I had driven down to Southern Indiana, and I was only supposed to spend a few hours there, and then I was headed for Kentucky. It was not meant to be a long trip. No, I was just supposed to be getting away for a day or two at the most, but I had run into a couple who contracted to be a part of a group of different people who went in and showed what life during the 1800s would have been like. This group was the Tin Trumpeters, and the things that they told me, they made me curious.

They had taken the time, on a day in February to tell me this story. There was this park that sits off the beaten path, and that it was the location of a grave, and this grave was a location that was tied to Abraham Lincoln. They would not tell me what the connection was, but that was the thing, I was going to make note of the site, and hope that I could remember enough of the story to remember where it was, but at the same time I was not sure that I had any reason to not try to make it fit.

Still, I continued to the south and into Kentucky. I was headed for the Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site. I had been there before, and at the same time, I knew that the cabin they had preserved inside the building there at Sinking Spring Farm, that it was all a reproduction. It was not something that the people at the park announced to the world, but I really wanted to go back. But in the back of my mind, there were so many things that I really wanted to do, and one of the biggest reasons for this trip was that I had not really had the chance to get away, and with the things that had gone on, I just needed a couple days away.

The loss of my father a few months before had been a challenge to negotiate. He and I, while we didn’t always talk, or even see eye to eye, we used to take little trips like this, and mom would often tag along. It was dad’s sense of being able to ask the right questions as we were going on that made the adventure worthwhile. But that was the thing, I knew that mom was not really up for the trip, not that she was not invited, and she and I had planned a lot of trips together over the years.

Maybe the trip had started with the idea that I really wanted to tie all the Lincoln sites together. I had been to the cabins in Kentucky, but at the same time, there was the one in Indiana that I had never been to, and it seemed like a logical place to start for me. But there was a part of me, that when I got put on the path, there was this innate desire to go and see more and more. I was the type who was not used to traveling by myself, it was not something that I did on a regular basis, but I would never get used to it, not unless I actually took the time to go.

And for me, there was this desire to see all of these Lincoln sites all in one round trip, but as I was sitting there talking with the couple in Indiana, they told me something that I had not really thought about. And there is nothing wrong with hearing a story, but that is the thing, when I hear a given story I have a tendency to want to see all the parts.

The story that I heard was one that I had figured was lost to time. But I hope that it will encourage you to chase after a little history.

As I stood there, watching the fire heat the food in the replicated cabin that sat on the grounds of the Abraham Lincoln Boyhood National Monument, the gentleman told me that there was one story from the Lincoln legacy that most people ignored. But when the Lincoln family originally made the move to Kentucky, the frontier was still there. There was not much to the west of the Kentucky territory. And the Native American tribes were still heavily populating the area.

One day, while out planting corn with his three sons, Captain Abraham Lincoln (often with the last name spelled Linkhorn) and Mordecai, Josiah and Thomas, a shot rang out through the day. When the boys looked around, they found that their father had been shot. One boy ran to the cabin to get a musket, and one of the others ran to a nearby fort to get help. Thomas, the youngest, he stayed there with his father’s body.

As Mordecai watched from a peep hole in the cabin he watched as the attacker came forward, he grabbed hold of Thomas and began to drag him away. Mordecai took aim and he shot the attacker dead, and thus saved the life of young Thomas.

It was there, on the spot where he had fallen that the boys dug the grave, and they buried the body of Captain Abraham Linkhorn. As the years had gone by, other graves had been added to the grave there, and it had become a cemetery. But the grave that Captain Lincoln was buried in somehow got lost, and a church had come in, and created a place for the people of the area to come and worship at.

The church was the Long Run Baptist Church, and while only the foundation of the church remains to this day, the park district in Louisville, Kentucky, takes good care of this park. They took the time to go back in, and roughly mark the grave of the president’s grandfather, which happened to be located somewhere about the middle of where the foundation of the church happened to be.

But why is this park so hard to find? Why is it not better marked on the map? These are questions that I cannot answer. Maybe it is, that the people of today do not feel that this is an important part of the Lincoln story. Or maybe they want to finally close the chapter on Abraham Lincoln, and the fact that his legacy is what it is. Who really knows, but this park is a very beautiful and serene place.

As I stood there, and it seemed to me that it was a warm day in February, and it was not exactly a dry day. I had run through periods of sun, and then rain. It was odd to think that the Lincoln Boyhood National Monument would have been the kind of place that would send me on a chase to go and find a chapter of history that has been forgotten by most. But that is the thing, I was almost sure that to have a hidden chapter of Lincoln’s history, that it would be fun to share with others.

But I cannot tell its history, without talking about the history of Lincoln’s boyhood. It was not that those of us who are willing to go out of our way to go and see the small town of Lincoln City, Indiana. And as I stood there, listening to the gentleman from the Tin Trumpeters, he told the short story of the small town. It has only a few houses that remain in it, but it grew up around the railroad, which once owned what is now the monument. And I can remember as I walked through the park, that there was a beauty about the place.

Flowers were already coming up, and the crocuses were already blooming. And it was only the middle of February. There was a part of me that really wanted to say that spring was there, and for the most part it was that day, but that did not change the fact that there was much to learn at the boyhood home.

The main building for the Lincoln Boyhood National Monument was farther away from the cabin ruins than one would expect, but it was such a beautiful morning, with the exception of the rain, that was coming off and on, so I figured it would not be worthwhile to stop, and only go to the visitor’s center, and never go and see what I was there to see. And as I stood there, looking at the ground, one could see that the cabin that had been erected, that it would not have been very big.

It was not that it really needed to be though, seeing that often the family would have spent considerable time outside doing the various things that needed to be done. But it would be at this cabin that Abraham Lincoln would experience loss for the first time. It was here, during his boyhood, that he would have lost his birth mother.

A few years ago, just prior to my trip to Indiana, I had spent the semester studying the life of Abraham Lincoln, while attending the University of Illinois at Springfield. The stories that I learned, were for the most part ones that I had heard many times over, but there are always times to sit and learn, and in some cases it is the best to argue. But one of the things that we talked about was the long term effects that had gone in place when Lincoln lost his mother, and I agree, that Lincoln would have been in his formative years, and the loss of his mother would have lasting effects, but in many ways you do not see this being played out quite as much.

Now, we must remember, death was something that surrounded the people of the 1700s and much of the 1800s. It was one of the many things that we learn by looking at Lincoln’s life. Lincoln’s mother, in the fall of 1818 had gotten sick. She would die from what they would have called milk sickness. It was basically that the milk that she was drinking was tainted from what the cow had spent its days eating.

There was no cure for milk sickness, but we would learn that over time we would have to watch what it was that the cattle ate, so that we knew how to keep the milk from being tainted. Though there was the fact that when we started to pasteurize milk that this milk sickness started to change course.

And as Thomas learned, there was almost no way that he knew how to raise his kids on his own. Some would argue that Thomas knew how to laugh with his kids when he told them funny anecdotes, but that was the thing, raising the kids, that was a different matter. He had tried his best to raise the kids, at least for a while. But that was the thing, there were things that a mother was better at, so Thomas leaves the kids, on their own, at a half finished cabin in the timber of Indiana. He goes back to Kentucky, and he sets to trying to court a Miss Sarah Bush Johnston.

It had been a year since Nancy Hanks Lincoln had passes away, and they had survived the harsh Indiana winter after her passing, and so Thomas Lincoln has a plan. He has heard word that Sarah Bush Johnston had been widowed. The details are kind of lacking as to how Thomas had heard. In many ways we gloss over the fact that Thomas has not really had any form of education, and many argue that he did not know how to read. Still, however he had gotten word, young Abraham would be the one who was fortunate.

The way that Lincoln bonded with Sarah Lincoln when she returned with Thomas, is something that is well known. There was not a harsh word to be said about Sarah Bush Lincoln. It was under her care that young Abraham would take to wanting to learn about reading, and any other subject that might come to mind, and this was happening in the harsh Indiana woods.

Did Sarah’s arrival negate all the pain that had come from Lincoln’s loss of his mother? No, probably not, but it seems that Sarah’s arrival did do one thing, it pushed Thomas to finish the cabin that would have been in those Indiana woods. Sarah, I am sure, took one look at the young Lincoln children, and probably thought that they were going to be hard to control. They had had to face a good portion of the year on their own, while their father had gone back to Kentucky. They looked very wild to Sarah, but she finds a way to tame them.

But what was it that drove me to choose to take the adventure to see these Lincoln sites? I would guess that it was just wanting to learn something about Lincoln, but that was the thing, I was just who I was. Someone who was curious about the beginning chapters of the Lincoln life. I had been to New Salem State Historic Site, which is a reproduction of the village where Lincoln would become a man, but that was the thing, the mystery of where the young man, Honest Abe, had come from, well, it was not an easy journey. And it would not be an easy journey which followed either.

I hope you enjoyed this story, and please, take the time to go and visit some of the places where I have mentioned above. Especially, if you are in Louisville, Kentucky, take the time to go and visit the ruins of the Long Run Baptist Church, and visit the grave of Abraham Linkhorn.