Kentucky
On June 12, 1806, Thomas Lincoln married Nancy Hanks at Beechland in Washington County, Kentucky. Nancy Hanks, born in what was Hampshire County, Virginia, was the daughter of Lucy Hanks and a man whom Abraham believed to be "a well-bred Virginia farmer or planter." She was also called Nancy Sparrow as the adopted daughter of Elizabeth and Thomas Sparrow. Dennis Hanks, Abraham's friend and second cousin, reported that Nancy Hanks Lincoln had remarkable perception. Nathaniel Grisby, a friend and neighbor, said that she was "superior" to her husband. Nancy taught young Abraham to read using the Bible, and modeled "sweetness and benevolence". Abraham said of her, "All that I am or hope ever to be I get from my mother".
Thomas Lincoln developed a modicum of talent as a carpenter and although called "an uneducated man, a plain unpretending plodding man", he was respected for his civil service, storytelling ability and good-nature. He was also known as a "wandering" laborer, shiftless and uneducated. A rover and drifter, he kept floating about from one place to another, taking any kind of job he could get when hunger drove him to it. Aside from making cabinets and other carpentry work, Lincoln also worked as a manual laborer.
Their first child, a daughter named Sarah Lincoln, was born on February 10, 1807, near Elizabethtown, Kentucky, at Mill Creek. By early 1809, Lincoln bought another farm, 300-acre (1.2 km2), near Hodgenville at Nolin Creek, located 14 miles southeast of Elizabethtown and near the home of Elizabeth (Betsy) and Thomas Sparrow. Although their cabin was a standard dirt floor, one room log cabin, their property was named Sinking Spring Farm for the "magnificent spring that bubbled from the bottom of a deep cave." On February 12, 1809, the Lincolns' second child, a son named Abraham Lincoln, was born.
Seeking more fertile property, Lincoln and his family moved to Knob Creek Farm in 1811. Situated 10 miles northeast of the Sinking Spring Farm on Nolin Creek, the Knob Creek Farm was also adjacent to the Louisville and Nashville Turnpike. It was at Knob Hill that Abraham had some of his first memories. For instance, he remembered the death of his parents' third child, his brother Thomas Jr. a few days after his birth in 1812. He also remembered the cultivation of corn and pumpkins and sometimes attending a limited, "A.B.C." school with his sister within a couple of miles of the family's cabin. It was while living at Knob Creek that Lincoln was made annual road surveyor and became 15th wealthiest of 98 property owners by 1814.
Lincoln lost farms three times after boundary disputes due to defective titles and Kentucky's chaotic land laws, complicated by the absence of United States land surveys and the use of subjective or arbitrary landmarks to determine land boundaries. He did not have the money to pay attorney's fees to resolve title disputes, such as liens against previous owners and survey errors. In addition, as a farmer, Lincoln was unable to compete with those who had slaves to work their fields.
Reluctant to discuss the extreme poverty of his youth, Abraham Lincoln quoted Gray's Elegy in 1860, saying his life could be summed up as "The short and simple annals of the poor." Without the food and clothing that they needed, they were considered among the "very poorest people" while in Kentucky. Abraham recounted years later, in a discussion with homeless boys in New York, that he had been poor and could remember "when my toes stuck out through my broken shoes in the winter; when my arms were out at the elbows; when I shivered with the cold."
Thomas Lincoln moved the family to Indiana in December 1816, and purchased land in accordance with the land ordinance of 1785, partly because slavery had been excluded in Indiana by the Northwest Ordinance. Abraham Lincoln claimed many years later that his father's move from Kentucky to Indiana was "partly on account of slavery, but chiefly on account of the difficulty of land titles in Kentucky."
