The picture is a likely replica, of course, but the original cabin and all his housing until he left home was a log cabin typically 18 by 18 feet with a field stone fire place unless they had a franklin stove then to haul along when they moved to new land.
By the by, our farm was originally fully fenced with those then hundred year cedar split rail fences and it was my nightly task to buck them down to provide our winter stock of fire starter for our coal based stoves. It s nice to see them young in this picture.
This is why I truly grew up with a foot in the world of Tom Sawyer and Abe Lincoln. we really had it all and we gave up the horses then for a small ford tractor..
how can anyone feel and touch this world and culture today? I am so blessed that i was there and could live in their world.
Kentucky Cabins: Lincoln’s Birthplace and Boyhood Home
In this installment of ‘History Off the Beaten Path,’ we visit two historic parks revealing much about President Lincoln’s humble beginnings.
President Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin. Today, a replica of the 19th-century cabin is part of history exhibit for visitors. Deena Bouknight
9/11/2024Updated:9/11/2024
https://www.theepochtimes.com/bright/kentucky-cabins-lincolns-birthplace-and-boyhood-home-5721029?
HODGENVILLE, Ky.—Unlike the now metropolitan state capitol of Springfield, Illinois, where Abraham Lincoln spent 24 pre-presidency years working, raising his family, and establishing a political career, his birth and early childhood homes are far from any beaten path. To find Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park in pastoral southeastern Kentucky, a visitor must plan ahead. A visit entails driving southwest of Hodgenville, Kentucky. It’s then another 10 miles northeast through open pasturelands and small farms to Knob Creek Farm Lincoln Boyhood Home.
However, anyone visiting Louisville, Lexington, or Evansville, Kentucky, or who have Mammoth Cave National Park on their travel bucket list, should consider the two historic parks must-see places. The drive from one of these starting points takes anywhere from an hour to just over two hours. Yet, not seeing where the 16th president began his humble life is missing on a significant history locale.
Old Abe’s Humble OriginsLincoln’s birthplace, known as Sinking Springs Farm, is named for a spring emerging from a cave. It’s a manicured setting with rolling lawns, walkways, an educational visitors center, and a centerpiece: a massive Corinthian-column structure protecting a reproduction of the Lincoln family’s original one-room cabin. In total, the park encompasses 116.5 acres.
Visitors can walk up the 56-step staircase—the number representing Lincoln’s age at death—to the marble and granite memorial and view the exterior and interior of a rough log-and-chinking home. Here, Lincoln began his “most humble walks of life,” as he wrote in his first political announcement in New Salem, Illinois, on March 9, 1832.
On either side of the memorial home’s entryway are bronze plaques bearing the names of individuals who formed the Lincoln Farm Association in 1906. They include such notables as the 27th president William H. Taft, author Samuel L. Clemens (also known as Mark Twain), journalist and biographer Ida Tarbell, and politician William J. Bryan.
In the early 1900s, the Lincoln Farm Association spearheaded a fundraising effort to raise $350,000 from 100,000 American citizens in order to build the memorial. President Theodore Roosevelt was prominent in the story of how Lincoln’s birthplace became an official National Park Service Historical Park. Roosevelt laid the memorial’s cornerstone on the centennial of Lincoln’s birth, Feb. 12, 1909. Prominent in the visitor center’s entryway are photographs of Roosevelt, as well as Taft, who dedicated the memorial, which John Russell Pope designed in 1911.
Visitors to the site will learn that when Roosevelt stood beside the log cabin, surrounded by his wife, Edith; Major Archibald Butt; author Robert Collier; and financier Clarence Mackay, he declared: “The rude log cabin in which Lincoln was born in Hodgenville, Kentucky, is a symbol of his bonds with the common people, and it has come to mean to them as Americans what the humble stable in Bethlehem means to them as Christians.”
This plaque commemorates the effort to preserve Lincoln's boyhood home for future generations. Deena Bouknight
More History to ExploreAfter seeing Lincoln’s birthplace and gleaning information from park rangers and volunteers, travelers can take a 10-mile countryside drive to the even more bucolic setting at Knob Creek. This is where the Lincolns moved in 1811, when Abe was still a toddler, after a land dispute at Sinking Springs. His father, Thomas, leased 30 acres. At the time, this area was frontier land, but fertile for clearing to grow crops. As one park ranger stated, “It’s still very similar to how it was when Lincoln was growing up—no memorial, no manicured areas.”
Along the densely wooded Knob Creek, signs inform visitors that young Abe might have drowned during a flash flood had not a visiting friend, Austin Gollaher, pulled him to safety. Also on the site, is another replica cabin, similar to the one-room birthplace cabin—with fireplace and sleeping loft—that the Lincolns occupied while living at Knob Creek, until 1816. They moved again when Abe was 7 years old.
Further, split-rail fencing on the Knob Creek site shows how Abe got one of his nicknames, “rail splitter.”
Split-rail fencing is a popular easy-to-construct fence type that was used often in the 19th century. Deena Bouknight
There’s a small visitor center on the property, but this is a natural area meant for reflection. What was life like for young Abe? How did his time at Knob Creek help shape the American history titan he became?
A drive from the two important Lincoln sites into neighboring Hart County brings travelers to an Amish community, where horse-drawn carriages maneuver rural roads and country stores are filled with home-baked goods and locally grown produce.
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