Abraham Lincoln's early life and career

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a one-room log cabin at Sinking Spring farm, south of Hodgenville, in Hardin County, Kentucky. His siblings were Sarah Lincoln Grigsby and Thomas Lincoln, Jr. After a land title dispute forced the family to leave, they relocated to Knob Creek farm, eight miles to the north. By 1814 Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's father, had lost most of his land in Kentucky in legal disputes over land titles. In 1816 Thomas and Nancy Lincoln, their nine-year-old daughter, Sarah, and seven-year-old Abraham moved to Indiana, where they settled in Hurricane Township, Perry County, Indiana. (Their land became part of Spencer County, Indiana, when it was formed in 1818.)

Abraham spent his formative years, from the age of 7 to 21, on the family farm in Southern Indiana. As was common on the frontier, Lincoln received a meager formal education, the aggregate of which may have been less than 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 1818, two years after their arrival in Indiana, nine-year-old Lincoln lost his birth mother, Nancy, who died after a brief illness. Thomas returned to Kentucky the following year and married Sarah Bush Johnson. Abraham's new step-mother and her three children joined the Lincoln family in Indiana in 1819. A second tragedy befell the family in 1828, when Abraham's sister, Sarah, died in childbirth.

In 1830 twenty-one-year-old Abraham joined his extended family in a move to Illinois. After helping his father establish a farm in Macon County, Illinois, Lincoln set out on his own. Lincoln worked as a boatman, store clerk, surveyor, militia soldier, and became a lawyer in Illinois. He was elected to the Illinois Legislature in 1834, and was reelected in 1836, 1838, 1840, and 1844. In 1842, Lincoln married Mary Todd; the couple had four sons. In addition to his law career, Lincoln continued his involvement in politics, serving in the United States House of Representatives from Illinois in 1846. He was elected president of the United States in 1860.

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