I finally managed (on my third try) to complete Part 1 of my Chasing Abraham Lincoln tour. Last week I wrote about my first stop at the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum, which is on the campus of Lincoln Memorial University. My next stop was the homestead where Abraham Lincoln died and Thomas Lincoln got married.
That may sound a little confusing at first. Consider how I started chapter one of my book, Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America:
Abraham Lincoln was killed by an Indian in the spring of 1786. This was the namesake grandfather of the future president. Thomas Lincoln, the president’s father, was nearly killed at the same time. Only 8 years old, young Thomas was being dragged away by his father’s murderer when Mordecai, his 15-year-old brother, killed the attacker with a shot from the family musket. Thus, Thomas was saved and the family line leading to Abraham Lincoln’s birth remained intact. Had Thomas died as a child, the future of the United States would have been substantially different, if the country existed at all.
The Lincoln Homestead is the farm where Abraham Lincoln (the grandfather) was killed. It’s also where Thomas Lincoln (Abe Lincoln’s father) courted Nancy Hanks, Lincoln’s mother.
The site itself was closed the day I arrived, which meant I couldn’t get inside the buildings. I could, however, walk around the grounds and take photos. The “Lincoln Cabin” is a reconstruction, as is the “Lincoln Workshop.” These are set up as they would have been when Thomas Lincoln was growing up. The third building is an original structure. The two story Francis Berry House is where Nancy Hanks was working as a seamstress while being courted by Thomas. Thomas proposed in front of the big fireplace. I couldn’t get inside but did snap a few photos through the windows.
As I mention in the book excerpt above, Thomas’s older brother Mordecai had killed their father Abraham’s killer. Through the ancestral law of primogeniture, the entire estate passed to the eldest brother Mordecai when he gained adulthood, at which point he likely turned the 12-year-old Thomas out of the house to work for others. Mordecai then built the much larger house above about a mile down the road. He lived out the rest of his life in that house, farming the large tract of land that now encompasses the Lincoln Homestead State Park (and an 18-hole golf course).
And here is where the story gets weird. Mordecai gained even more pedigree by marrying Mary Mudd from one of the “first families” of Washington County, Kentucky. If that name sounds familiar it’s because she is a distant cousin to Samuel Mudd, the doctor who set John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg after he assassinated Abraham Lincoln.
From the Lincoln Homestead I headed for Knob Creek and the Lincoln Birthplace. More on those in following posts.
David J. Kent is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
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