How to Became the Greatest President in History! Abraham Lincoln!
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Park is the birthplace and childhood home of America’s favorite and most loved President. The Park is located at two different sites around Hogdenville, Kentucky and about an hour from Mammoth Cave National Park. Hogdenville, Kentucky is a great place to spend the day learning all about Abraham Lincoln birth and youth plus ride a train or at least walk around and see several train depending how much time you have for the area. (Note: Hogdenville is about an hour away from Mammoth Caves National Park!)
I spent the day in Hogdenville and visited 4 different places: Lincoln’s Museum, Abraham Lincoln Birthplace Nation Park both the birth site and boyhood home, and Kentucky Railway Museum!
Starting in downtown Hogdenville was wonderful because the Museum show how much Lincoln still means to people day!
Lincoln Museum
The Lincoln Museum is in downtown Hogdenville which also has a park in the middle with statues of Lincoln as a man and boy. The Museum itself has artwork of Lincoln that is still being made today. It also is great showing the progressive life of Lincoln in life size dioramas with wax figures starting with Cabin Years to Ford Theater.
The museum is two floors of an old building and a great little collection of Lincoln memorabilia. My favorite was newspaper clippings from when Lincoln was alive!
Check out the area around the museum as well as it has several items that have historical value, ie the Hogdenville Women’s Club which was started in 1919. Plus the statues of Lincoln which his son Robert came to town to unville.
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace
The exact birthplace of Lincoln is not completely known. As history shows that Lincoln was born at sinking spring but the actually location of the cabin has vanished into history. As most cabins of the time, it was taken down for process. But the cabin would have been close to the spring as the spring was the main reason that Lincoln father would have bought the property!
The Spring would have been were Lincoln was supplied water for his first bath, his first drink of water, and other water needs! The Spring comes down from the rocks and goes down into the rocks but the greatest thing is that it is nice and cool down there. It is like an air condition unit is going full blast.
Next to the spring is the first memorial built to Lincoln. The Memorial has 56 step to represent each year of Lincoln’s life and holds a cabin inside that represents the cabin that Lincoln was born in. When looking for donates school children were asked to bring in their pennies! The fund raising started in 1906 and brought in over $350,000 to build the first great memorial to Abraham Lincoln! President Theodore Roosevelt placed the cornerstone on February 12, 1909 which was one hundred years after Lincoln’s birth. Two years later, President Taft would dedicate the memorial.
The Lincoln Birth site was along a main road that many believed slaves would be transported on to go deeper south to be sold. Lincoln would have seen this as a young child but he moved to a different place several years after his birth due to a property issue and may not have remembered seeing the slaves shackled and marched along the road. Although, Lincoln was born in a log cabin, he was born into a middle class family as they had enough money through his dad working as a carpenter to buy this land.
The park itself allows you to walk up the stairs but it also has two different trails to take you to the memorial. One is directly behind the visitor center which has a great movie about Lincoln, a small table that his father built, and a few other great items. My favorite was being able to touch a bear, beaver, and a few other animal hides. I always wondered why beaver hides were so wanted that beavers almost became extinct. Now I know, they are so soft!
I took the stairs up but took the trail to the left back to the parking area so that I could roam around the back woods that Lincoln would have played in as a boy! This would have been were he skinned his knee for the first time. Been afraid of the great big world. His time on this land was short but it would have taught him how to walk and all those things that are subconscious brings to a person in those years that you don’t remember!
Another items on the park is Nancy Lincoln Inn which was built in 1928 by James R. Howell. The Inn put the 4 cabin help house the growing tourist coming to Lincoln’s Birthplace as Americans were traveling by car in that Summer Vacation that Chevy Chase made so funny and so real!
After touring the Birthplace, I went over to his boyhood home which is back to town and to the right. They have lots of signs to show the way.
Abraham Lincoln Boyhood Home
Abraham Lincoln Boyhood home is not that far from where he was born. But he said that it was were he had his first memories of helping plant seeds. These memories would work to help him realize that he did not want to work with his hands but rather learn and study to be behind a desk. It would be at this place that Lincoln would learn to read. His sister and he would walk down the road 2 mile to go to school.
Unfortunately, they are in the middle of redoing the place and I only got to see the outside. But they will be opening shortly in 2022. The site also has a trail which goes up and around to look down on the farm but the weather keep me from taking it. But if you have a few hours being water and hiking shoes. The view should be wonderful!
The site has a welcome center and a cabin that has been recreated plus the fields are being worked as a real farm. I hope to be pacing it again to see inside.
After looking around the farm, I went to the Kentucky Railway Museum which as you leave the boyhood site take a left but go slow for about 2 miles. They have a sign that shows the school that Lincoln first learned to read, write, and a bit of math. It does not have a place to park and is right around a courner on the left.
Kentucky Railway Museum
The Kentucky Railway Museum allows you to walk through a passenger train and on the outside of several other train cars. It has a wonderful little room with scale model trains with little towns. It has a bit of memorabilia and historical artifacts but overall. It was not my favorite train museum to visit.
But I think that I was around at the wrong time. Visit their website and see all the tours that they offer. This is the train museum is all about getting on and taking a ride. I hope that I will be passing by again to get one. In addition, the a 90 minute ride is reasonably price starting at $20. It also has a option to ride in the locomotive. Check on the best evert for you on their website. I am looking at the Polar Express in December or the Train Robbery. (Note: it looks like they do most events and rides on Saturday and Tuesdays.)
Brief History
Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth President of the United States. During his presidency, the civil war raged pitting the South against the North over the rights of States vs the rights of the Federal Government rights. It was a turning point for the nation. It was over slavery laws but it was not started to free the slaves. Freeing the slaves was just a by product of the war. But this is what Lincoln will be remember for.
Visiting his Birthplace and Boyhood Home is a way that many people honor his memory but it also allows you to see just how his mind was formed from a young age. For about the first two years of his life, he lived on the land that he was born on. But Kentucky had just become a state in 1792 and lots of land was in dispute on ownership. He would have seen slaves traveling through on the main road just outside his cabin for the first two years of his life and went to anti slavery church with his parent during his time in Kentucky. But the effect on a young mind of watching men, women, and even children being shackled, chained, whipped, beat, and even possible killed while passing by his cabin had to have been deep in his subconscious.
Moving from his Birthplace to his Boyhood Home, would have been a bit of a shock to him but with a loving mother at his side, he most likely adjusted quickly and with only a bit of an issue. The Knob Creek Farm would be were he said later in life was his first memory of helping plant seeds and doing farming chores. Also knowing, it was the last thing he wanted to do in life which lead him to work hard in school.
His father would have rather he worked hard on the farm but even young Lincoln know that it was not the right career path for him. The school that he attended 2 miles down the road was one that did not have extra money for books, paper, and other tools like this. Lincoln would use dirt and a stick, stream on the widows and his finger, and other things to practice his letters because he was going to educated himself and get out of being a farmer.
His father was not amused by this but thankfully, his mother supported him. Lincoln would spend 5 years helping his father on this farm but yet another issue came with this new farm and his father was feed up with helping someone else clear the land and take it away from him. He moved the family to Indiana and purchased land from the Federal Government and in a place that slavery not permitted.
But this seven years, helped form Lincoln’s mind and allow he to realize that he wanted an educated. It also showed him slavery in the worst way as slaves being driving to market, i.e. marched in chains or in caged wagons or in wagons with white guards, would have been more badly abused then those at having already been purchased as slave sellers were on a time frame to get to market. Every day that a slave seller was traveling he lost money because he had to pay for help to control the slaves, feed the slaves, and housing for himself, helper, and slaves. So, pushing those slaves to move faster was more important then an kindness that an actual owner might show or if not kindness, the fact that the slave would have both a monetary value and a value of labor for the farm.
Did Lincoln witness a slave being beat to death during his time in Kentucky? We will never know. But it is very possible that his time in this area and at under 7 years old, he saw things that we could never dream about in seeing today. He would have seen at the very least, slaves in chains being walked by his home and later in town when he went to church or with his father for supplies. Young minds have a way of handling seeing things like this and form lifetime memories.