edal on the breast of the
Indian, Mordecai fired. The Indian fell, and springing to his feet the
boy ran to the open arms of his mother at the cabin door. Meanwhile
Josiah, who had run to the fort for aid, returned with a party of
settlers. The bodies of Abraham Lincoln and the Indian who had been
killed were brought in. From this time forth Mordecai Lincoln was the
mortal enemy of the Indian, and it is said that he sacrificed many in
revenge for the murder of his father."

In the presence of such dangers Thomas Lincoln spent his boyhood. He was
born in 1778, and could not have been much more than four years old on
that fatal day when in one swift moment his father lay dead beside him
and vengeance had been exacted by his resolute boy brother. It was such
experiences as these that made of the pioneers the sturdy men they were.
They acquired habits of heroism. Their sinews became wiry; their nerves
turned to steel. Their senses became sharpened. They grew alert, steady,
prompt and deft in every emergency.

Of Mordecai Lincoln, the boy who had exhibited such coolness and daring
on the day of his father's death, many stories are told after he reached
manhood. "He was naturally a man of considerable genius," says one who
knew him. "He was a man of great drollery. It would almost make you
laugh to look at him. I never saw but one other man who excited in me
the same disposition to laugh, and that was Artemus Ward. Abe Lincoln
had a very high opinion of his uncle, and on one occasion remarked that
Uncle Mord had run off with all the talents of the family."

Thomas Lincoln was twenty-eight years old before he sought a wife. His
choice fell upon a young woman of twenty-three whose name was Nancy
Hanks. Like her husband, she was of English descent. Like his, her
parents had followed in the path of emigration from Virginia to
Kentucky. The couple were married by the Rev. Jesse Head, a Methodist
minister located at Springfield, Washington County, Kentucky. They lived
for a time in Elizabethtown, but after the birth of their first child,
Sarah, they removed to Rock Spring farm, on Nolin Creek, in Hardin
(afterward LaRue) County. In this desolate spot, a strange and unlikely
place for the birth of one destined to play so memorable a part in the
history of the world, on the twelfth day of February, 1809, Abraham
Lincoln the President was born.

Of all the gross injustice ever done to the memory of woman, that which
has been accor