16. Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park (Hodgenville, Kentucky) commemorates Lincoln’s birth on February 12, 1809, in the family’s one-room log cabin at their frontier farm named Sinking Spring. The original log cabin was lost, but a memorial building enshrines a similar nineteenth-century cabin. Lincoln only lived here two years before the family relocated about ten miles away to a new homestead, Knob Creek Farm. When Lincoln was seven years old, the family moved yet again to establish a new homestead in Spencer County, Indiana. These childhood farms are now designated as a National Historical Site and a National Park, respectively, and both feature recreation log cabins. Lincoln had only a smattering of formal education, but he was a tremendous reader who, largely, taught himself. He grew up accustomed to farm labor, and years later the nickname of “Rail Splitter” would celebrate his rural, common man roots as he ran for political office.
Two presidents were born here in Kentucky, both in log cabins, about 90 miles and 9 months apart: Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. Davis' father decided to move to Mississippi to engage in the cotton business while the Lincolns moved north to Illinois. The rest, as they say, is history. . . Just a couple of hours down the road from my home, I have been to the Lincoln sites several times and have never quite gotten on board with the grandiose Greek-style temple that houses the memorial cabin. Of all the log-cabin presidents, Lincoln's rural roots are certainly the most iconic and well-known. His boyhood home site just down the road with an open field, split-rail fence, and several period structures gives a better feeling for his quiet beginning in this hills of KY. While the enshrined cabin did not belong to the Lincoln family, it is original to the same time and I am quite pleased with the abstracted image of the hand-built chimney.