Thomas Lincoln was evidently one of those easy-going, good-natured men who carry the virtue of contentment to an extreme.  He appears never to have exerted himself much beyond the attainment of a necessary subsistence.  By a little farming and occasional jobs at his trade, he seems to have supplied his family with food and clothes.  There is no record that he made any payment on either of his farms.  The fever of westward emigration was in the air, and, listening to glowing accounts of rich lands and newer settlements in Indiana, he had neither valuable possessions nor cheerful associations to restrain the natural impulse of every frontiersman to “move.”  In this determination his carpenter’s skill served him a good purpose, and made the enterprise not only feasible but reasonably cheap.  In the fall of 1816 he built himself a small flatboat, which he launched at the mouth of Knob Creek, half a mile from his cabin, on the waters of the Rolling Fork.  This stream would float him to Salt River, and Salt River to the Ohio.  He also thought to combine a little speculation with his undertaking.  Part of his personal property he traded for four hundred gallons of whisky; then, loading the rest on his boat with his carpenter’s tools and the whisky, he made the voyage, with the help of the current, down the Rolling Fork to Salt River, down Salt River to the Ohio, and down the Ohio to Thompson’s Ferry, in Perry County, on the Indiana shore.  The boat capsized once on the way, but he saved most of the cargo.

Sixteen miles out from the river he found a location in the forest which suited him.  Since his boat would not float up-stream, he sold it, left his property with a settler, and trudged back home to Kentucky, all the way on foot, to bring his wife and the two children—­Sarah, nine years old, and Abraham, seven.  Another son had been born to them some years before, but had died when only three days old.  This time the trip to Indiana was made with the aid of two horses, used by the wife and children for riding and to carry their little equipage for camping at night by the way.  In a straight line, the distance is about fifty miles; but it was probably doubled by the very few roads it was possible to follow.

Having reached the Ohio and crossed to where he had left his goods on the Indiana side, he hired a wagon, which carried them and his family the remaining sixteen miles through the forest to the spot he had chosen, which in due time became the Lincoln farm.  It was a piece of heavily timbered land, one and a half miles east of what has since become the village of Gentryville, in Spencer County.  The lateness of the autumn compelled him to provide a shelter as quickly as possible, and he built what is known on the frontier as a half-faced camp, about fourteen feet square.  This structure differed from a cabin in that it was closed on only three sides, and open to the weather on the fourth.  It was usual to build the fire in front of the open side, and the necessity of providing