Discover Lincoln's Early Years

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a one-room log cabin on the Sinking Spring farm, south of Hodgenville in Hardin County, Kentucky. His siblings were Sarah Lincoln Grigsby and Thomas Lincoln, Jr. In 1816, Thomas and Nancy Lincoln, their nine-year-old daughter Sarah, and their seven-year-old son Abraham moved to what became Indiana, where they settled in Hurricane Township, Perry County, Indiana.

Lincoln spent his formative years, from the age of 7 to 21, on the family farm in the Little Pigeon Creek Community of Spencer County, in Southwestern Indiana. As was common on the frontier, Lincoln received a meager formal education, the accumulation of just under twelve months. However, Lincoln continued to learn on his own from life experiences and through reading and reciting what he had read or heard from others.

In March 1830, 21-year-old Lincoln joined his extended family in a move to Illinois. Lincoln settled in the village of New Salem where he worked as a boatman, store clerk, surveyor, and militia soldier during the Black Hawk War, and became a lawyer. He was elected to the Illinois Legislature in 1834 and was reelected in 1836, 1838, 1840, and 1844.