Abe's Youth

William Bartelt, Josh Claybourn

Description

Since his death, Abraham Lincoln has been celebrated as savior of the Union, proponent for emancipation, president of the United States, and skilled statesman. Although Lincoln's adult life has been well documented and analyzed, most biographers have regarded his early years as inconsequential to his career and accomplishments.

In 1920 a group of historians known as the Lincoln Inquiry were determined to give Lincoln's formative years their due. Abe's Youth takes a look into their writings, which focus on Lincoln's life between 7 and 21 years of age. By filling in the gaps on Lincoln's childhood, these authors shed light on how his experiences growing up influenced the man he became. As the first fully annotated edition of the Lincoln Inquiry papers, Abe's Youth offers indispensable reading for anyone hoping to learn about Lincoln's early life.

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Works from Indiana's Lincoln Inquiry

Part 1: Lincoln's Hoosier Influences

1. Lincoln's Boyhood Days in Indiana / Roscoe Kiper

2. Lincoln's Environment in Indiana / Roscoe Kiper

3. Lincoln in Indiana / William Fortune

Part 2: Lincoln's Neighbors and Influences

4. Lincoln's Indiana Neighbors / Bess V. Ehrmann

5. Life of James Gentry Jr. / J. Helen Rhoades

6. The Grigsbys / Calder (Bess) Ehrmann

7. More Lincoln Memories / Nancy Grigsby Inco

8. Biographical Sketch of Josiah and Elizabeth (Anderson) Crawford / Will Adams

9. Daniel Grass / Laura Mercy Wright

10. The Athe Meeks Sr. Tragedy / Aaron Meeks

11. The Mystery of Lincoln's Melancholy / Louis A. Warren

12. Lincoln and the Wool-Carder's Beautiful Niece / Jesse N. Weik

13. Word Pictures of Pioneer Families and Lincoln Contemporaries / Bess V. Ehrmann

14. Interviews with Spencer County Pioneers about 1895 / T. H. Masterson

15. Early Days in Spencer County / Daniel Hayford

Part 3: Lincoln's Neighborhood and Environment

16. The Lincolns and Their Home in Spencer County, Indiana / C. C. Scheeder

17. An Interview with James Atlas Jones on the Lincoln Cabin in Spencer County / George H. Honig

18. The Lincolns' Eastward Environment / Thomas James de la Hunt

19. Some Early Troy History / Sallie Bergenroth

20. Early Agriculture in Spencer County, Indiana / David H. Morgan

21. Materia Medica of Pioneer Indiana / H. C. Knapp

Part 4: Lincoln and the Law

22. Environment and Opportunities of Lincoln in Indiana / Elbert Hayford

23. John A. Brackenridge / Eldora Minor Raleigh

24. John Pitcher / Alice L. Harper Hanby

25. Judge John Pitcher / John E. Cox

Part 5: The Lincoln Inquiry

26. The Environments of Abraham Lincoln in Indiana: The Best Witnesses / Anna C. O'Flynn

27. The Lincolns in Spencer County / Ida D. Armstrong

28. The Artist's Ideal of Lincoln / George H. Honig

29. What Indiana Did for Lincoln / Bess V. Ehrmann

30. Correspondence Between Lincoln Historians and This Society / John H. Iglehart

Lincoln and Southwestern Indiana Chronology

Index

Sujets

• HISTORY
• Mensajería instantánea
• Biography
• Sarah Bush Lincoln
• Little Pigeon River (Tennessee)
• New Salem
• Perry County
• Childhood
• History of the Americas
• American Civil War
• Nancy Lincoln
• United States
• Civil War
• KS
• Union
• IL
• ND
• IN
• NE
• OH
• MN
• SD
• MO
• MI
• Springfield
• Guerre de Sécession
• Abraham Lincoln
• Kentucky
• Indiana
• Illinois

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780253043900
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

The Indiana Lincoln Inquiry s footprint in southwestern Indiana s eight-county pocket, the same region where Abraham Lincoln spent his boyhood. New Harmony sits on the Wabash River southwest of Poseyville.
Map by Kate Blackmer. Reprinted from Everybody s History: Indiana s Lincoln Inquiry and the Quest to Reclaim a President s Past. Copyright 2012 by the University of Massachusetts Press.

Boundaries of Indiana counties in 1816 with present-day boundaries denoted by dotted lines.
US National Park Service.

This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2019 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bartelt, William E., editor. | Claybourn, Joshua A., editor.
Title: Abe s youth : shaping the future president / edited by William E. Bartelt and Joshua A. Claybourn.
Description: Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018049660 (print) | LCCN 2018051362 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253043924 (e-book) | ISBN 9780253043917 (hc : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253043894 (pb : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865-Childhood and youth. | Presidents-United States-Biography. | Indiana-Biography.
Classification: LCC E457.32 (ebook) | LCC E457.32 .A24 2019 (print) | DDC 973.7092 [B]-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018049660
1 2 3 4 5 24 23 22 21 20 19
CONTENTS
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
PART I * Lincoln s Hoosier Influences
1. Lincoln s Boyhood Days in Indiana / Roscoe Kiper
2. Lincoln s Environment in Indiana / Roscoe Kiper
3. Lincoln in Indiana / William Fortune
PART II * Lincoln s Neighbors and Influences
4. Lincoln s Indiana Neighbors / Bess V. Ehrmann
5. Life of James Gentry Jr. / J. Helen Rhoades
6. The Grigsbys / Bess V. Ehrmann
7. More Lincoln Memories / Nancy Grigsby Inco
8. Biographical Sketch of Josiah and Elizabeth (Anderson) Crawford / William Franklin Adams
9. Daniel Grass / Laura Mercy Wright
10. The Athe Meeks Sr. Tragedy / Aaron Meeks
11. The Mystery of Lincoln s Melancholy / Louis A. Warren
12. Lincoln and the Wool-Carder s Beautiful Niece / Jesse N. Weik
13. Word Pictures of Pioneer Families and Lincoln Contemporaries / Bess V. Ehrmann
14. Interviews with Spencer County Pioneers about 1895 / T. H. Masterson
15. Early Days in Spencer County / Elbert Daniel Hayford
PART III * Lincoln s Neighborhood and Environment
16. The Lincolns and Their Home in Spencer County, Indiana / C. C. Schreeder
17. An Interview with James Atlas Jones on the Lincoln Cabin in Spencer County / George H. Honig
18. The Lincolns Eastward Environment / Thomas James de la Hunt
19. Some Early Troy History / Sallie Bergenroth
20. Early Agriculture in Spencer County, Indiana / David H. Morgan
21. Materia Medica of Pioneer Indiana / Belle V. Knapp
PART IV * Lincoln and the Law
22. Environment and Opportunities of Lincoln in Indiana / Elbert Daniel Hayford
23. John A. Brackenridge / Eldora Minor Raleigh
24. John Pitcher / Alice L. Harper Hanby
25. Judge John Pitcher / John E. Cox
PART V * The Indiana Lincoln Inquiry
26. The Environments of Abraham Lincoln in Indiana: The Best Witnesses / Anna C. O Flynn
27. The Lincolns in Spencer County / Ida D. Armstrong
28. The Artist s Ideal of Lincoln / George H. Honig
29. What Indiana Did for Lincoln / Bess V. Ehrmann
30. Correspondence between Lincoln Historians and This Society / John E. Iglehart
Lincoln and Southwestern Indiana Chronology
Index
FOREWORD
IN THE WINTER OF 1860, SHORTLY BEFORE ABRAHAM LINCOLN delivered his memorable speech at New York s Cooper Union, a newspaper there ran a thoughtful assessment of the candidate s early years in Indiana, where he lived between the ages of seven and twenty-one: Probably six months in all of the rudest sort of schooling comprehends the whole of his technical education. But hard work and plenty of it, the rugged experiences of aspiring poverty, the wild sports and rude games of a newly and thinly populated forest region-the education born of the log cabin, the rifle, the ax, and the plow-made him the man he has since proved himself. 1
To help tell the story of those formative years in Lincoln s life, during the 1920s intrepid members of the Southwestern Indiana Historical Society performed a great service to Lincoln scholarship by conducting what they termed the Lincoln Inquiry. They could not scour contemporary local newspapers, for none of those published in Lincoln s time survived, nor did they engage in the kind of painstaking work later done by Louis A. Warren in many unpublished records (census returns, tax books, election results, voter rolls, and the like). 2 Rather, they conducted research among people living in the pocket, the southwest corner of the state where the Lincoln family settled in 1816 and remained until 1830. 3 The society s efforts have been ably chronicled by Keith Erekson in Everybody s History: Indiana s Lincoln Inquiry and the Quest to Reclaim a President s Past . 4 But the fruits of their labors have been hard to access, for some of the papers written by society members were unpublished and available only in manuscript form at various repositories, including the Willard and Central Libraries in Evansville and the William Henry Smith Memorial Library in Indianapolis. Moreover, some of their valuable information about Lincoln and his friends is found in the personal correspondence of the society s members, likewise available only in repositories such as the Indiana Historical Society.
The editors of the present volume have judiciously chosen some of the most informative essays and letters, have annotated and indexed them thoroughly, and are now making them available for students, scholars, and general readers interested in Lincoln s youth and adolescence. The most revealing material consists of reminiscences by people who knew Lincoln; but unfortunately by the time the Inquiry got under way few were still alive. Some, however, had shared their recollections of Lincoln with friends and family, who in turn passed them along to the society s investigators. Although that form of testimony is secondhand, it is useful nonetheless. In the following pages, such accounts can be found in contributions by Roscoe Kiper, Thomas Hardy Masterson, Elbert Hayford, and Will Adams.
Some society members had interviewed Lincoln s contemporaries well before the Inquiry was launched, most notably William Fortune and Anna C. O Flynn. In 1881, Fortune had sought out informants who had known Lincoln. Among them, two were especially noteworthy: Elizabeth Crawford and Nathaniel Gentry. In his paper Lincoln in Indiana, included in the present volume, Fortune tells how he became such an interviewer. Alas, his notes have not been published. 5
Anna C. O Flynn recalls in her paper, The Environments of Abraham Lincoln in Indiana: The Best Witnesses, how she corresponded with many people who had known Lincoln: I wrote to nearly everybody in the United States that knew Lincoln when a boy. I think I had over two hundred letters. Along with a friend, she toured Spencer County in 1895 and 1896 and reported that she spoke with hundreds of good people and wrote to many others. 6 Few of them had been contacted by earlier Lincoln sleuths. Anna O Flynn shared her findings with Ida Tarbell, who used them for her book The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln 7 and her later full-scale biography. 8 Regrettably, the O Flynn archive of letters has not been fully preserved; some of those missives, however, can be found in her papers at Vincennes University. (In that repository, researchers will also find useful interview material in the papers of Francis Marion Van Natter, author of Lincoln s Boyhood: A Chronicle of His Indiana Years. ) 9
In The Lincolns in Spencer County, Ida D. Armstrong tells how, in the 1870s, her journalist father pursued his interest in Lincoln by talking with people who had known the future president. She does not reveal much of what he learned, but readers interested to know more about his findings should read his essay, History of Spencer County, in An Illustrated Historical Atlas of Spencer County, Indiana. 10
In addition to these firsthand and secondhand recollections of Lincoln, many papers in the present volume provide accounts of his friends and neighbors, thus helping to re-create the social, cultural, and intellectual environment of his youth. The picture they paint is rather rosy, for a goal of the society was to describe their region more positively than previous Lincoln authors had done. Readers should be prepared to encounter a fair amount of boosterism in these pages. In contrast, as Jesse N. Weik noted, somewhat harshly, Lincoln s family were indeed a sorry lot-his father poor, inert, and void of ambition and the other members equally dull, improvident, and shiftless. To spend his days amid su