Today involved reconnaisance of the area. I found Lincoln's Boyhood National Monument and Lincoln State Park. Both of these sites focus on Lincoln's early life (7-21) and memorialize his mother and sister. Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, died when Lincoln was only 9 years old, Lincoln's sister Sarah, 11. They had lived in this area for two years, working very hard to establish a homestead.
Their first year, they lived in a 3-sided cabin and subsequently in a nice cabin with a window and two doors. Life was really hard! When Thomas Lincoln brought his family to this area, he had to clear it of dense forest ... apparently grape vines were so thick in the canopy of the trees that they supported the trees so that even getting the trees to fall was a challenge. It took the family something like 2-3 weeks to clear a path to where they wanted to place the cabin! Getting water wasn't easy either, because the spring they had was a good distance from the cabin. And who do you suppose they would send for water? I just bet it might have been the young Abe and Sarah.
The landscape is beautiful, having a gentle roll to it. The area has been restored to the approximate vegetation of the time. Tulip, hickory, cherry, oak, sassafras, dogwood, and sycamore trees exist, and of course, the deadly snake root plant that was responsible for Nancy H. Lincoln's death is growing, too. And the insects are plentiful. I was imagining what it must have been like for pioneers; I bet the insects were really, really bad then. However, I have never seen so many butterflies! They were so numerous that I literally bumped into them as I walked through the woods ... black with an irridescent blue, rust with brown spots, yellow and black, orange and black.
Lincoln's sister Sarah is buried at Little Pigeon Baptist Church, Lincoln having helped construct the original building. It is not too far from the homestead. Sarah had married Aaron Grigsby and was no longer living at home. She died during childbirth. Two things struck me about the cemetery where she is buried: women were lucky to survive childbirth and children were lucky to get through childhood. If they got through those two hurdles, their chances to live into their 50's or beyond improved greatly. I guess that's a no brainer. But there is probably something to survival of the fittest, too.
I foraged for food after a swim and found chicken in the form of a quesadilla at The Old School Cafe, a nice little restaurant in downtown Huntingburg.
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