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Show Rough Trail of Pioneers to History Tom Lincoln was looking for a wm-an wm-an to travel through' life with, for better bet-ter or worse. He visited at the place of Christopher Bush, a hard-working farmer who came from German parents and had raised a family of sons with muscle. Also there were two daughters with muscle and with shining faces and steady eyes. Tom Lincoln passed by Hannah and gave his best jokes to Sarah Bush. But it happened that Sarah Bush wanted Daniel Johnson for a husband and he wanted her. Another woman Tom's eyes fell on was a brunette sometimes called Nancy Hanks because she was a daughter of Lucy Hanks, and sometimes called Nancy Sparrow because she was an adopted daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Sparrow and lived with the Sparrow family. Sad With Sorrows. Tom Lincoln had seen this partieu lar Nancy Hank? (there were several other Nancy Hankses in Hardin county) coun-ty) and noticed she was shrewd and dark and lonesome. . . . Her dark skin, dark brown bair, keen little gray eyes, outstanding forehead, somewhat accented shin and cheekbones, body of slender build, weighing about 130 pounds these formed the outward shape of a woman carrying something strange and cherished along her ways of life. She was sad with sorrows like dark stars in blue mist. . . . The day came when Thomas Lincoln Lin-coln signed a bond with bis friend, Richard Berry, in the courthouse at Spriugllfcltl, in Washington county, over near where his brother, Mordecai. was funning and the bond gave no tice: "There is a marriage s-hortly intended in-tended between Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks." It was June 10, 180G. Two days later, at Richard Berry's place, Beechland, a man twenty-eight years old and a woman twenty-three years old came before Rev. Jesse Head, who later gave the county clerk the names of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, as having been "joined together in the holy estate of matrimony matri-mony agreeable to the rules of the Methodist Lpiscopal church." . . . The new husband put his June bride on his horse and they rode away on the red clay road along the timber trails to Elizabethtown. Their new home was in a cabin .close to the courthouse. court-house. Tom worked at the carpenter's trade, made cabinets, door frames, window win-dow sash and coffins. A daughter was born and they named her Sarah. . . . The same year saw the Lincolns moved to a place on the Big South fork of Nolin's creek, about two and a half miles from Hodenville. One morning in February of this year, 1S09, 'Tom Lincoln came out of his cabin to the road, stopped a neighbor neigh-bor and asked him to tell "the granny woman," Aunt Peggy Walters, that Nancy would need help soon. Lincoln's Birth. On the morning of February 12, a Sunday, the granny woman was there at the cabin. And she and Tom Lincoln Lin-coln and the moaning Nancy Hanks welcomed into a world of battle nuj-blood, nuj-blood, of whispering dreams and wistful wist-ful dust, a new child, a boy. A little later that morning Tom Lincoln Lin-coln threw some extra wood on the tire, and an extra bearskin over the mother, went out of the cabin, and walked two miles up the road to where the Sparrows, Tom and Betsy, lived. Dennis Hanks, the nine-year-old boy adopted by the Sparrows, met Tom al the door. In his slow way of talking he was a slow and quiet man Tom Lincoln told them, "Nancy's got a boy baby." A half-sheepish look was in his eyes, as though maybe njre babies were not wanted in Kentucky just then. The boy, Dennis Hanks, took to his feet down the road to the Lincoln cabiD. There he saw Nancy Hanks on a bed of poles cleated to a corner of the cabin, under a large, warm bearskin. bear-skin. She turned her dark head from looking at the baby to look at Dennis and threw him a tired, white smile from her mouth and gray eyes. He stood by the bed, has eyes wide open, watching the even, quiet breaths, of this fresh, soft , red baby. "What you goin' to name him, Nancy?" the boy asked. "Abraham," was the answer, "after his grandfather." Little Dennis Prediction. Little Dennis rolled up in a bearskin and slept by the fireplace that night. He listened for the crying of the newborn new-born child once in the night and the feet of the father moving on the dirt floor to help the mother and the little one. In the morning he took a long look at the baby and said to himself. "Its skin looks just like red cherry pulp squeezed dry, in wrinkles." And Dennis swung the baby back and forth, keeping up a chatter about bow tickled he was to have a new cousin to play with. The baby screwed up the muscles of its face and began crying with no let-up. Dennis turned to Betsy Sparrow, handed her the baby and said to her. "Aunt, take him! He'll never come to much." So came the birth of Abraham Lincoln Lin-coln that twelfth day of February In the year 1S00 in silence and pain from a wilderness mother on a bed of corn husks and bearskins with an early laughing child prophecy he would never come to much. And though he was born In n house with only one door and one window it was written he would come to know many doors, many windows; lie would read many riddles and doors ami win dows. From "Abraham Lincoln, Hi, Prairie Years," by Carl Sandburg |