when he went on to illinois it was twenty one and each step took him toward his destiny but here he was a boy and his day he did those things boys do at any time and any place it was d's ember of eighteen sixteen when tom lincoln brought his family and possessions from kentucky to this place to do it he had to hack a five mile track from the crude trail road to his section of land a seven year old a would always remember he had never passed through a it was a boy growing up in indiana and to a boy the taking of the grain to the mayo was a pleasure he was a chance to lift your eyes from the ground and talk or sport with other boys waiting their turn at the horse powered mill but always it was back to the early start as a hunter which was never improve that a few days before the completion of my a c s a flock of wild turkeys approached the new cap standing inside with a rifle gun i shot through in time lincoln and his family were pioneers but carving a home in an unbroken room was a new experience even for they're still there we're not alone other families twenty eight you know living here is a four by six on three different farms in kentucky thomas lincoln lost part or all of to careless of a well here in indiana his plane t the lincoln dome one hundred eight in the center of the june in this little community working together meant the difference between success and tasks were trading a word and build a community to one neighbor built a mill another a blacksmith shop that fascinated it was here in the deceptive fragile beauty of one of these sluggers the snake group that the nine year old abraham would learn the depths of some cows that  gender sickness invaded the link read certain verses which i had an early boyhood committed to memory by hearing my mother repeat the tones of her voice would come to me and i would sing to hear her speak those words again the book at seventy five cents and abraham work it off by pulling father for three days and twenty five cents a day many years later speaking gentry's door he would probably use like you frame into the anger on your porch timbers and in his drawer but serious manner ruminate on polities theology the cause of rain or the lack of the the state of the union is wisdom some felt it was beyond his years sixteen miles from his home the ohio river was to teach the young lincoln money with entertaining and squire hope he started a business of supplying the fuel hungry river city with wood near anderson creek with each person board and six dollars a month was based to build a small boat which egypt as a landing nearby on the one day to travellers ask him to row them out to meet a river about the middle of december eight hundred twenty eight lincoln and allen gentry shoved off with their cargo of beans corn meal grain chickens cured meats bees wa snags and sam bars kept her in the channel out of the dangerous eddies as they floated downstream the welds in greatness of america and folded before center of the community social life his church plans for a meeting house were flown in the minutes of the little pigeon baptist church for marched in eighteen twenty one thomas lincoln in this place he spent fourteen years exactly one quarter of what was to be life span these were the years this was the place of these what are the roots of greatness here in the simple life of this place great this was nurtured the link in memory is a man who knew and loved people in this was the mark greatness in this was the measure of his suffering surely of all men lincoln himself knew the truth of his own words when in his first inaugural address he said i appeal to the memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot great living living off and on stone all over this broad flat in his time as president those cords of memory would be strained to breaking the battles of the civil war would be the tempering blows in the forge of our freedom but cheering and strengthening the real shape of america and now he belongs to the ages