Abraham Lincoln 3 Essay Research Paper Abraham

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Abraham Lincoln 3 Essay, Research Paper Abraham LincolnEvery boy and girl who knew Abraham Lincoln loved him as a friend. All the children around his home in Springfield, Ill., and around the White House in Washington felt that “Mr. Lincoln” understood them and truly liked them. Men and women who knew him admired him and called him “honest Abe.” People throughout the world said he was one of the greatest men of all time. He was an unusual man in many ways. One minute he would wrestle with his sons or tell a joke and slap his bony knees in laughter. The next minute he might be deep in thought and not notice anything around him. He was gentle and patient, but no one was more determined. He was tall–nearly six feet four inches–very thin, and stooped. He spent less

than a year in school, but he never stopped studying. All his life he was a “learner.” Born in a log cabin on the frontier, he made his own way in life and became the president who kept the United States united.His Family Came from EnglandThe first of the Lincoln family to come to America was Samuel Lincoln. He had been a weaver’s apprentice at Hingham, England. He settled in Hingham, Mass., in 1637. From there the family spread southward to Virginia, where Abraham’s father, Thomas Lincoln, was born in 1778. When Thomas was four years old the family moved to Kentucky. There his father, who was a farmer, was killed by Indians. Thomas grew up in Kentucky. He never went to school, but he learned to be a carpenter. He was a strong, heavy-built man, who sometimes spoke sharply

and at other times entertained his friends with jokes and stories. Some historians have called him shiftless. True, he moved many times in his life, but he worked hard enough at carpentry to buy farms. He did not, however, make much of a living, because most of the land he cleared was too poor for good crops.Marries Nancy Hanks, Mother of AbrahamIn 1806 Thomas married Nancy Hanks. She had been born in Virginia, but little else is known of the Hanks family. Nancy was only a baby when her mother Lucy brought her to Kentucky. When Nancy married Thomas Lincoln she was 22 years old, tall, and slender. Some historians say she could neither read nor write, which was not unusual for pioneer women. Others say that she read the Bible daily. Thomas and Nancy settled in Elizabethtown in

Hardin County, Ky. Their first child, Sarah, was born there. In 1808 Thomas bought a half-cleared farm at Sinking Spring on the Nolin River near Hodgenville. He hopefully moved his family to this first farm–a rolling stretch of thin, poor land on a lonely river.Abraham Born in a Log CabinAbout sunrise on Feb. 12, 1809, the son of Thomas and Nancy Lincoln was born. They named him Abraham after his grandfather Lincoln. Abraham’s birthplace was a one-room log cabin, 16 feet long and 18 feet wide. The logs were chinked with clay and light came dimly through the single window. The floor was earth, packed down hard, and the bed was made of poles and cornhusks. A roaring fire on the hearth and rough bearskin blankets kept Nancy and her son Abraham warm on that cold winter morning.

In the spring of 1811 Thomas Lincoln moved his family to a farm he had bought on Knob Creek, about ten miles northeast of Sinking Spring. In later years Abraham Lincoln said that the Knob Creek farm was the first home he remembered and he loved it. Like all farm boys in those busy days young Abe learned to plant, hoe, husk corn, build hearth fires, carry water, and chop wood. When he was six years old, Sarah and he tramped “up the road a piece,” some two miles each way, to a log schoolhouse. Here he learned to read, write, and “do sums” (arithmetic). He liked writing best of all. Later he said that he practiced writing “anywhere and everywhere that lines could be drawn.” He wrote with charcoal on the back of a wooden shovel and even in dust and snow. Between chores