Abraham Lincoln seems to have had a falling out with his father later in life, rarely visiting once he had a family of his own. When Thomas passed away at the age of 73, Abraham was home tending to a sick wife and his rambunctious boys. Thomas died on January 17, 1851.
I recently visited Thomas Lincoln’s gravesite near Lerna, Illinois. Today there is a beautiful headstone marker noting Thomas Lincoln and his second wife, Lincoln’s stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln. It guards a small fenced area that also includes small individual markers at the foot of each of their graves.
Originally the Gordon Burial Ground, then the Shiloh Cemetery, and now called the Thomas Lincoln Cemetery, the gravesite sits next to the Shiloh Presbyterian Church on the way to the Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site. Abraham Lincoln visited his father’s grave shortly before heading to Washington to be inaugurated as our 16th president.
He would not have seen a grave marker. Likely no more than a rock marked the site at the time, a nephew said that Abraham placed a board with the initials T.L. during his visit. Whether that story is true or not, a permanent gravestone was not erected until 1880 after donations by local friends and Robert Todd Lincoln.
But that isn’t the end of the story, for the gravestone erected then is not the one passersby see today, unless they pay attention. The beautiful grey headstone most obvious to visitors was installed in 1924 by the Illinois Lions Club, with the two smaller footstones donated by the Kiwanis Club a year later. The more unassuming original marker sits in its own wrought iron fenced area about 50 yards from the modern marker. This small spire had been slowly chipped away by tourists seeking souvenirs, hence the need for a surrogate stone. A “Looking for Lincoln” sign sits in the small parking lot in back of the church, and only its readers are tipped off to the location of the original gravestone.
George Balch, a local farmer and poet who knew Thomas and Sarah Lincoln, wrote a poem years later to bring public attention to the neglected condition of the grave. A portion graces the waymarker sign; the following presents the entire poem.
I
In a low, sweet vale, by a murmuring rill,
The pioneer’s ashes are sleeping.
Where the white marble slabs are so lonely and still,
In the silence their vigil are keeping.
II
On their sad, lonely faces are words of fame,
But none of them speak of his glory,
When the pioneer died, his age and his name,
No monument whispers the story.
III
No myrtle, nor ivy, nor hyacinth blows,
O’er the lonely grave where they laid him;
No cedar, nor holly, nor almond tree grows
Near the plebian’s grave to shade him.
IV
Bright evergreens wave over many a grave
O’er some bow the sad weeping willow,
But no willow trees nor evergreens wave
Where the pioneer sleeps on his pillow.
Some are inhumed with honors of state
And laid beneath temples to moulder;
The grave of the father of Lincoln the great,
Is known by a hillock and boulder.
VI
Let him take his lone sleep, and gently rest,
With naught to disturb or awake him,
When the angels shall come to gather the blest
To Abraham’s bosom, they’ll take him.
Abraham would never see his stepmother again as she was too old to make the trip to Washington and President Lincoln never traveled back to Illinois. He was assassinated in office on April 14-15, 1865, days after the end of the Civil War. Sarah Bush Lincoln outlived her stepson, passing away on April 12, 1869.
David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World 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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My Abraham Lincoln book collection continues to grow, quickly filling the new library space I created last year. I acquired 69 new Lincoln books in 2018. This compares to 59 in 
A few days before Christmas 1864, Abraham Lincoln received a Christmas present from General William T. Sherman – 
“Will it play in Peoria?” It did. They did. And I did. How a 
The annual Lincoln Forum in Gettysburg is in the books and we have a new General, get to keep the Chief, and took a few steps into the future. Oh, and we had some great speakers, a ton of Lincoln humor, and even a few spirits (the dead kind).
Union victories were coming more frequently in the late summer and fall of 1863, although not universally, as a loss at Chickamauga and the New York draft riots would attest. But now it was time for a more somber occasion.
But wait, there’s more. This past year I made several “Chasing Abraham Lincoln” trips, including long road trips to Kentucky/Indiana and Illinois. Check out my 
Abraham Lincoln was the first “selfie” nut. His first photograph was in 1846, taken only about seven years after the daguerreotype process was introduced worldwide. Talk about your early adopters. That first photograph was basically a class picture as the newly elected young 
Lincoln went on to have at least 130 photographs taken during the remainder of his life, with the final solo photograph taken in early February of 1865. Two photographs were taken after this. One was a erratically focused crowd shot of him standing on the Capitol steps giving his second inaugural address on March 4, 1964. The other was an unauthorized photo of Lincoln laying in an open casket in New York City following his assassination.
In most of the photos Lincoln sits or stands alone. One has him sitting with his youngest son Tad standing beside him gazing down at the book open in Lincoln’s lap. Perhaps the most intriguing photos are the series taken by Alexander Gardner at Antietam during Lincoln’s post-battle visit to meet with General McClellan. In one, the lanky Lincoln and the diminutive McClellan stare down each other in a group photo with other generals.
I write about Lincoln and his photographs for a few reasons. It was November 8, 1863 that Lincoln sat for a photo with his two secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay, standing to either side. I have also recently read two books that look at the photographers most often associated with Lincoln and the Civil War: Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner. The other of one of the books, Nicholas J.C. Pistor, will be a speaker at the upcoming Lincoln Forum in Gettysburg. The author of the second book, Richard S. Lowry, was a Forum speaker a few years ago. Both books are wonderful reads. I’m also including a section on Lincoln and photography in my “work-in-progress,” so I have a particular interest in this area.
Traveling can take you back in time (as in, history)…or it can take you away in space (as in, geography; so far no actual space travel for me). I’m about to do both.
Abraham Lincoln was the Whig candidate in 1846 and, as per a gentlemen’s agreement with other Whigs, served one term as a U.S. Congressman from December 1847 to March 1849.
“As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew,” said Abraham Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War. “
