and besides, a sort of pride prompted the recital of this exciting chapter of family history, with scenes that preceded it.

“It would take me a week,” he would say, “to tell you all I have heard your grandpa say about those dark days. The very year he came here, 1780, the Injins attacked the settlers in great force. All the men were ordered to organize into companies, and Daniel Boone, ‘the great hunter of Kentucky,’ who settled there five years before the Lincolns did, was made a lieutenant colonel, and all the forces were put under the charge of General Clark. They started to meet the enemy, and found them near the Lower Blue Licks. Here they fought a terrible battle, and the Injins beat, and cut up the whites badly. Boone’s son was wounded, and his father tried to carry him away in the retreat. He plunged into the river with him on his back, but the boy died before he reached the other side. By the time Boone got over the river, he looked around and saw that the Injins were swimming after him; so he had to throw down his dead son, and run for his life. He got away and reached Bryant’s Station in safety. Before that, the Injins captured three little girls and carried them off. They belonged to the fort at Boonesboro, and one of them was Boone’s daughter. They were playing with a canoe in the Kentucky river, and crossed over to the other side, when a party of Injins rushed out of the bushes into the river and drew the canoe ashore. The girls were scared almost to death, and screamed so loud that they were heard at the fort. The men in the fort ran out to help them, but by the time they reached the canoe, the savages had fled with the girls. It was almost night—too late to organize and pursue them, and so they spent the night in mustering all the men they could and started after them at break of day. But it was well-nigh the close of the next day when the settlers came in sight of the Injins, forty miles off. They had camped for the night, and were cooking their supper. Fearing that the Injins would kill the girls rather than give them up, it was the plan of the settlers to shoot them so suddenly that they would have no time to kill the girls. So they banged away at the savages, all of them together, as soon as they came in sight of them, taking good care not to hit the children. Not one shot hit an Injin, but the attack was so sudden and uproarious, that the redskins were scared half out of their wits; and they ran away as fast as their legs could carry them, leaving the girls and their weapons behind.”

Abraham’s young life was regaled with many such “yarns”—real facts of history—belonging to the times and experience of his ancestors. Whatever may have been the effect of these “harrowing tales” upon his mind, it is quite certain that he must have seen, by contrast, that his own condition, with all its want and woe, was a decided improvement upon that of his grandfather’s family.

But to return to our story. Abraham’s grandmother removed after her husband was shot; and Thomas, his father, was compelled to shift for himself as soon as he was old enough to work for his living. Being a rover by nature, and under the necessity of supporting himself, he wandered about from place to place in search of jobs, and took up his abode wherever there was a chance to earn his bread and butter. He was not very enterprising, nor particularly industrious at this period of his life. He loved a roving life too well and was too well satisfied with jolly companions to mean business. His wandering career, however, showed him much of the world, and furnished the opportunity to store his mind with anecdotes and some useful information, which he made frequent use of in after years, and by reason of which he became very popular with his associates.

When Thomas Lincoln was about twenty-six years of age, he went to live with Joseph Hanks, a carpenter, of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, to learn his trade. It was here that he met Nancy Hanks, niece of Joseph Hanks, whom he courted and afterwards married, thereby getting, not only a trade, but a wife also. The latter, however, was much more of an acquisition than the former; for he was never competent to do any but the roughest work at his trade. When he was married to Nancy he set up housekeeping in a more miserable abode at Elizabethtown than the log cabin on Nolin Creek. From this shanty, into which he took his bride, he soon removed to the other shanty on the aforesaid Creek.

This is how and why Thomas Lincoln, father of Abraham, became the proprietor of the rickety habitation in Hardin County that we have described to the reader. Here three children were born to him: Sarah, the eldest, Abraham next, and Thomas the third. The latter died in infancy.