The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1895-04-19
SKETCHES OF LINCOLN.
Nancy Hanks Passes Over the
Dark River.
LITTLE ABEs DISMAL EXPERIENCE

Marries Sally Bush Johnston-Two Sets
of Children In the Lincoln Household.
Abe at Dorsey's School.
[From "The Life of Lincoln by William H.
Herndon and Jesse W. Weik. Copyright, 1888,
by Jesse W. Weik. Copyright, 1892. by D. APP.
pleton & Co.
In the fall of 1918 the scantily settled
region in the vicinity of Pigeon creek,
where the Lincolns were then living,
suffered a visitation of that dread dis
ease common in the west in early days
and known in the vernacular of the
frontier as "the milk sick. 1t lowered
like specter over the Pigeon creek set.
Element for over ten years, and its fatal
visitation and inroads among the Lin
coins, Hankses and Sparrows finally
drove that contingent into Illinois. To
this day the medical profession have
never agreed upon any definite cause
for the malady, nor have they in all
their scientific wrangling determined
exactly what the disease itself is.
Early in October of the year 1918
Thomas and Betsy Sparrow fell ill Of
the disease and died within few days
of each other. Thomas Lincoln perform
ed the services of undertaken. With his
whipsaw he cut out the lumber and
with commendable promptness nailed
together the rudest of collins to inclose
the forms of the dead. The bodies were
borne to scantily cleared knoll in the
midst of the forest, and there, without
ceremony, quietly let down into the
grave. Meanwhile Abe's mother had
also fallen a victim to the insidious dis
ease Her sufferings, however, were
destined to be of brief duration. With
in a week she, too, rested from her Ia
bors.
''She struggled on day by day." says
one of the household, "a good Christian
woman, and died on the seventh day
after she was taken sick. Abe and his
sister Sarah waited on their mother and
did the little jobs and errands required
of them. There was no physician nearer
than 80 miles The mother knew she
was going to die and called the children
to her bedside. She was very weak, and
the children leaned over while she gave
her last message. Placing her feeble hand
on little Abe's head, she told him to be
kind and good to his father and sister.
To both she said, BE good to one an
other expressing a hope that they
might live, as they had been taught by
her, to love their kindred and worship
God" Amid the miserable surround
ings of home in the wilderness Nancy
Hanks passed across the dark river.
Though of lowly birth, the victim of
poverty and hard usage, she takes a
place in history as the mother of a SOD
who liberated race of men. At her
side stands another mother whose Son
performed a similar service for all man
kind 1900 years before.
After the death of their mother little
Abe and his sister Sarah began dreary
life-indeed one more cherries and less
inviting seldom falls to the lot of any
child. In a log cabin without floor,
scantily protected from the seventies Of
the weather, deprived of the comfort Of
mothers love, they passed through a
winter the most dismal either one ever
experienced.
A Matter of Fact Courtship.
= Thomas Lincoln's widowerhood was
brief He had scarcely mourned the
death of his first wife year until he
reappeared in Kentucky at Elizabeth
town in search of another. His admira-
tion had centered for second time on
Sally Bush, the widow of Daniel john
ston, the jailer of Hardin county, who
had died several years before of a dis
ease known as the ''cold plague The
tradition still kept alive in the Ken
lucky neighborhood is that Lincoln had
been sutton for the hand of the lady
before his marriage to Nancy Hanks,
but that she had rejected him for the
hand of the more fortunate Johnston.
However that may have been, it is GER
tain that he began his campaign in
earnest this time and after brief siege
won her heart. ''He made very short
courtship," wrote Samuel Haycraft to
me in a letter on Dec. Z, 1866. "He
came to see her on the 1st of December,
1919, and in straightforward manner
told her that they had known each other
from childhood Miss Johnston, said
he, I have no wife and you no husband.
Icame purpose to marry you. l knowed
you from gal, and you knowed me
from boy. I've no time to lose, and if
you re willin let it be done straight off. ,
She replied that she could not marry
him right off, as she had some little
debts which she wanted to pay first. He
replied, Give me list of them He
got the list and paid them that evening.
Next morning issued the license, and
they were married within 60 yards of
my house"
In the eyes of her spouse she could
not be regarded as poor widow. She
was the owner of a goodly stock of fur
niture and household goods, bringing
with her among other things walnut
bureau valued at $50. What effect the
new family, their collection of furni-
ture, cooking utensils and comfortable
bedding, must have had on the astonish-
ed and motherless pair who from the
door of Thomas Lincoln's forlorn cabin
watched the well filled wagon as it came
creaking through the woods can better
be imagined than described.
Surely Sarah and Abe as the stores