And those with whom the story of his own first twenty-one years is bound up invite almost as summary treatment.  Thomas Lincoln never prospered like Mordecai and Josiah, and never seems to have left the impress of his goodness or of anything else on any man.  But, while learning to carpenter under one Joseph Hanks, he married his employer’s niece Nancy, and by her became the father first of a daughter Sarah, and four years later, at the farm near Hodgensville aforesaid, of Abraham, the future President.  In 1816, after several migrations, he transported his household down the Ohio to a spot on the Indiana shore, near which the village of Gentryville soon sprang up.  There he abode till Abraham was nearly twenty-one.  When the boy was eight his mother died, leaving him in his sister’s care; but after a year or so Thomas went back alone to Kentucky and, after brief wooing, brought back a wife, Sarah, the widow of one Mr. Johnston, whom he had courted vainly before her first marriage.  He brought with her some useful additions to his household gear, and her rather useless son John Johnston.  Relatives of Abraham’s mother and other old neighbours—­in particular John and Dennis Hanks—­accompanied all the family’s migrations.  Ultimately, in 1830, they all moved further west into Illinois.  Meanwhile Abraham from an early age did such various tasks for his father or for neighbouring farmers as from time to time suited the father.  When an older lad he was put for a while in charge of a ferry boat, and this led to the two great adventures of his early days, voyages with a cargo boat; and two mates down by river to New Orleans.  The second and more memorable of these voyages was just after the migration to Illinois.  He returned from it to a place called New Salem, in Illinois, some distance from his father’s new farm, in expectation of work in a store which was about to be opened.  Abraham, by this time, was of age, and in accordance with custom had been set free to shift for himself.

Each of these migrations was effected with great labour in transportation of baggage (sometimes in home-made boats), clearing of timber, and building; and Thomas Lincoln cannot have been wanting in the capacity for great exertions.  But historians have been inclined to be hard on him.  He seems to have been without sustained industry; in any case he had not much money sense and could not turn his industry to much account.  Some hint that he drank, but it is admitted that most Kentucky men drank more.  There are indications that he was a dutiful but ineffective father, chastising not too often or too much, but generally on the wrong occasion.  He was no scholar and did not encourage his son that way; but he had a great liking for stories.  He was of a peaceable and inoffensive temper, but on great provocation would turn on a bully with surprising and dire consequences.  Old Thomas, after Abraham was turned loose, continued a migrant, always towards