Land of Lincoln?

Happy Independence Day! In honor of the occasion, I thought I'd talk about Abraham Lincoln - I know, not a founding father, but a man who believed in freedom, equality, and the United States of America.

We're staying about 16 miles south of Louisville, KY in a real RV park with full hookups! As soon as we arrived, the heat broke and we haven't needed the air conditioning since. Figures. Anyway we've been so busy here that I've gotten behind in the blog. I'll try to catch up in the next couple of days.

The other day, we toured with a Lincoln theme. Although Illinois claims the title of 'Land of Lincoln', Abe was actually born in Kentucky. The fact that surprised me is that his family wasn't poor. Sure he was born in a log cabin, but that's because they lived on the frontier. They were middle class or even upper middle class for the area according to the tax records. Imagine that!

First we visited his boyhood home - a modest log cabin on 30 acres of gorgeous fertile bottomland alongside Knob Creek. The family lived there for five years until Abe was seven years old. The family rented the farm from George Lindsey and left in 1816 because of a lawsuit over a prior claim to the land. They moved to Indiana where they spent the next 14 years.

This cabin is not actually the one the Lincolns occupied, but is said to be similar.


Next we visited the Lincoln Museum in Hodgenville which contains 12 scenes of importance in Lincoln's life with life-sized wax figures. They are very well done. Here he is writing the Emancipation Proclamation.


We had some excitement when Ernie and Wanda locked their keys in the car, but AAA was there within 15 minutes.


Then we saw where Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809. Wow! He was born in a mansion!

Actually the log cabin (which looked just like the other one and also was not the actual cabin) was inside this mausoleum type structure. There was a good movie at the visitors center and our tour guide was very knowledgeable, but I thought the pink granite building was just ridiculous. Thomas Lincoln purchased this property just before Abe was born. It was 348 acres with a spring right on the property, but the red clay was not very fertile. Unfortunately, this land was also involved in a land title dispute and the Lincolns moved to Knob Creek in 1811.

While we were at the museum, Ron found a list of statements, known as Lincoln's 10 "Cannots". We thought they were timely and bought a copy.

Lincoln's 10 "Cannots"

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.

You cannot further brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative.

You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.

You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.

You cannot establish security on borrowed money.

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they will not do for themselves.

After we brought it home we read the fine print which said. . .
For nearly a century, Abraham Lincoln has been erroneously credited as author of the 'Cannots'. Although they do express many of his sentiments, they were never written or spoken as such by him. The 'Cannots' were in fact written, copyrighted and printed in 1916 by Reverend William J.H. Boetcker.

No matter - they're still good advice.