Abraham Lincoln Birthplace – Kentucky [September 13, 2015]

The Memorial

While we always think of Abe Lincoln as being “from” Illinois, he was actually born in Kentucky and lived here until he was 7.  He was born in a very small (14 feet by 16 feet) log cabin, in a quiet stretch of hilly woodland next to a gurgling spring hidden inside a cave. 

The Tiny Cabin

In 1906 a group of luminaries of the time (Mark Twain, William Jennings Bryan, and Samuel Gompers to name a few) raised money to buy the property and build a marble and granite memorial design by John Russell Pope.  They moved a log cabin purported to be THE log cabin where Lincoln was born inside where it could be preserved forever.  President Teddy Roosevelt laid the cornerstone.  President Howard Taft dedicated the memorial.  This is a grand stone memorial to the humble beginnings of this great President.  The property is now part of the National Park Service.

Recently The Discovery Channel did carbon dating on the wood and discovered that the logs composing the cabin were from trees felled in 1848, not 1809 when Lincoln was born.  However, the cabin is typical of the kind they probably lived in, so the National Park Service calls it a “symbolic” cabin.

This gurgling spring is inside a cool sink hole that echoes with its music.

A few years after Abe was born, the family moved to another farm 10 miles down the road, and then from there out of Kentucky.