That Nation Might Live: One Afternoon with Lincoln’s Stepmother Read online

  “Danny and I had our times, then children come along, first Betsy, then Tildy, and he still wasn’t doing a stitch a work. Things weren’t as charming to me then as they once were. Soon I was a squawking hen with a babe on each hip. I puzzle still how fast change come. Soon enough we owed so much money we found ourselves standing afore our neighbors on a delinquent list. Then Danny went and borrowed from my brothers and when he couldn’t pay them back, they went to suing my husband and me for the notes. We were held as without funds. Mama laughed and laughed for my payback before she would cry and cry. My father seemed a tinge joyful to see me humbled before God as I was.”

  She blinked then, rapidly, I suspect to withhold tears. Mrs. Lincoln continued:

  “My Pa knew nothing about a boy named Abe Lincoln. Nancy’s boy was dutiful to me always—he loved me truly I think. I did not want Abe to run for President. I did not want him elected, was afraid somehow or other, felt it in my heart that something would happen to him; and when he came down to see me after he was elected President, I still felt that something would befall Abe and that I would see him no more. Abe and his father are in Heaven, I have no doubt, and I want to go there, go where they are. God bless Abraham.”

  Here the old lady stopped — turned around and cried — wiped her eyes — and proceeded:

  “Tom Lincoln married Nancy Hanks soon after Danny and me were married. Our lives were daily together one last time when we were both trying to make it in Liztown. Right round the same time Nancy and I have our first babes, and both girls. That’s Sairy from Nancy, and Elizabeth was mine. We called her Betsy. She was a purt beauty from the git.” Mrs. Lincoln stared into the flame, searching for answers. After a respectful pause I reminded Mrs. L. she was speaking of her life in Elizabethtown, KY, after she and Nancy had their baby girls. She resumed:

  “Danny was doing a fine job spending Pappy’s money like he was a nobleman, and Tom Lincoln’s trying to work as a carpenter. It wasn’t Tom’s fault he couldn’t make a living by his trade. There was scarcely any money in that country. Every man had to do his own tinkering and keep everlastingly at work to git enough to eat. So Tom took up some land further out, mighty ornery land. It was the best Tom could git, when he hadn’t much to trade for it. Nancy moved off when Abe was in her belly. We had to move him to the side for a proper goodbye.

  Tom tried to farm stubborn ground and make a home from the timber he cut. It was rough living—the floor was packed dirt. The door swung on leather hinges. There was one small window and a stick-clay chimney. Poor Nancy! Next time we seen each other we laughed and laughed about how we were no longer girls, just before we cried and cried.”

  “I seen Tom and Nancy at gatherings or storing at Bleakey’s. Seen Abe and Sairy too. Abe grown taller each time, skinny like a rail. He never give Nancy no trouble after he could walk, except to keep him in clothes. Most of the time he went b’arfoot. I heard Tommy and Nancy were having to stretch, and then I’d see Nancy and it’d seem to solidify the Lincolns were poorer than anybody. She’s always a dignified personage, just roughed up from grubbing roots to feed her babes. And splitting rails and hunting and trapping didn’t leave Tom no time to put a puncheon floor in his cabin, so they were living on dirt floors. It was all he could do to get his family enough to eat and to cover them.

  “Nancy was powerful ashamed of the way they lived, but she know’d Tom Lincoln was always doing his best. She wasn’t the pestering kind no how. She was purty as a picture and smart as you’d find them anywhere. She could read and write. Tom thought a heap of Nancy, and was as good to her as he know’d how. He didn’t drink, or swear, or play cards, or fight; and them were drinking, cussing, quarrelsome days. Tom was kind to all, still could whip a bully if he had to. He just couldn’t git ahead somehow.

  “When Abe wasn’t b’arfoot he was running round in buckskin moccasins and breeches, a tow-linen shirt and coonskin cap. Yes, that’s the way we all dressed them days. We couldn’t keep sheep from the wolves, and poor folks didn’t have scarcely any flax except what they could git trading skins. The Lincolns weren’t much better off than Injuns. Tom got a hold of a better farm after a while, further out still, but he couldn’t get a clear title to it. So when Abe was eight years old, the Lincoln’s lit out for Indiana.

  “Tommy told me years later that Kaintuck was gittin stuck up, with some folks rich enough to own slaves, didn’t seem no place for poor folks anymore. Might say too, Tommy was Separate Baptist, and he didn’t care for profanity, intoxication, gossip, horse racing, or dancing - certainly did not care for slaving.

  “‘Every man must skin his own skunk,’ Tom liked to say about those times.

  “Indiana wasn’t even a state yet when Tommy went up there to claim his land. Forest was as the Good Lord created it in the Beginning. Tommy said there were trees twenty foot round, and the forest floor was buried in grapevines to his waist, some stems he said were a full nine inches round. Abe told me once that there were hairy elephants that roam the same woods till the Injins killed them off. I think he was just fooling on me.”

  I informed Mrs. Lincoln that, in fact, the Wooly Mastodon evolved to survive cold climate, then had to migrate south due to the Ice Age. Evidence suggests big animal hunters crossed from Asia into North America over a land and ice bridge. Mrs. L. enjoyed this - said listening to me felt as though Abe had returned with his explanations. She continued:

  “Tommy settled on land I was eventually to live on. And with all that land to choose from Mr. Herndon, would you know that my future husband selects a clearing for the salt-licks, and all his good hunting. Was over a fool mile from the nearest stream! No sir, I ain’t much for picking them.

  “I made sure to say goodbye when the Lincolns lit out for Indianny. Never seen Nancy Hanks Lincoln again. Everything they had worth taking was piled on the backs of two pack horses. Tom said to Nancy he could make new pole beds and puncheon tables and stools, easier than he could carry them. Said goodbye to the newborn they buried on Muldraugh’s Hill. Climbed 400 feet up to the Little Mount Cemetery where a plot was marked by a limestone slab. Tom said he had to brush off the debris to reveal ‘T.L.’ chiseled into the surface of the stone. There lay his namesake, his baby boy who lived long enough to be given a name, though the poor lil feller wasn’t to stay long enough to have his name inscribed in the family Bible.”

  Mrs. Lincoln dabs her tears dry with her handkerchief. Continues:

  “Offin they went. Lincolns reached their new home about the time the state came into the Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There Abe grew up.”

  After some pause that appeared all Mrs. Lincoln was to speak on the subject. I inquired about the Bush family—her mother, father and her siblings, and how she had grown up.

  “Well, Mr. Herndon . . .” She paused. “Some of my kin got rebel in them.”

  “Please do speak plainly, Mrs. Lincoln,” I entreated. “My own father disinherited me, after calling me an ‘abolitionist pup.’ Come, now—be candid. Who was your father? What was he like?” I encouraged her unrestrained comment. Mrs. Lincoln wrapped her shawl tighter about her shoulders before she continued:

  “My father was Christopher Bush,” she said, staring into the fire. “My father and brothers were known as stalwart men. There was no back-out in them. Never shunned a fight where they considered it necessary to engage in it, and nobody ever heard a Bush, my father or my brothers, cry, ‘enough.’

  “My brother Isaac once had a bullet extracted. He refused the doctors when they prepared to tie him down. He just lay down on a bench and placed a musket ball between his back teeth. Chewed it to pieces while the surgeons cut nine whole inches before they got the bullet. He didn’t so much as wince when they removed it from his leg.

  “My mamma was Hannah Bush. We were one of the first to settle in Kaintuck. My Pa went out with his family and his brother. Uncle wasn’t made for the clearing and was scalped soon after we arrived. My Pa h
ad my oldest brother, William, who was by then a man himself. Samuel and Hannah were still just chillern, and Isaac was a nursing babe. Eventually there were nine of us Bush children. My Pa built up all kinds of land. I got some of it, Mr. Herndon. My Pa was a generous man.

  “Pa and my brothers were Patrollers. Tommy Lincoln was too. Pa was the Captain. Tommy couldn’t do it for too long - couldn’t stomach returning run-aways back South. My Pa and brothers didn’t see it as such. The whipping posts were for all colors, so long as law was to be prop’ly respected.”

  Mrs. Lincoln stared back at me blankly. I inquired about the passing of her first husband, Daniel Johnston.

  The old lady nodded and smiled and set her rocker to moving with a quiet, regular creak on the oak floor, seemed to reflect for a moment.

  “Danny got himself appointed jailor for Hardin County. He was providing a roof over our heads, us Johnstons and the prisoners too. We were all under one roof. I raised my babes in a stone jail set up, ancient-like, with prisoners living in cells beneath us. I born my last one in earshot of them prisoners. Can you imagine it? That was my boy, John D. ‘D’ was short for his father Daniel, through and through! It was not as I figured me when my sisters and I had our corncob babes back in the playing days. I cooked and cleaned for prisoners mostly, for Danny’s job it was.

  “Danny died soon after the Lincolns moved to Indiana. He couldn’t hold any food down and eventually heaved himself to his last breath. Then Nancy died of milk-sick plague in Indiana. Nancy would a lived to be old if she’d had any kind of care, and I reckon she must a been strong to a stood what she did.

  “Figuring the rest is easy enough, right up to Tom Lincoln showing up at my door with his speech prepared. History now, but on that day it was quite a thunderclap. Betsy was off schooling and I was knitting my wares while Tildy and John D. done their best not to poke the other in the eye. The door knocks and who you reckon is standing there, Mr. Herndon, but barrel-chested himself, Tommy Lincoln. He was quick about it, saying he had no wife and I had no husband. He says he came a purpose to marry me. He know’d me from a gal and I know’d him from a boy. He had no time to lose, he said, and if I was willing let it be done straight off.

  “‘Well,’ I says, ‘I can’t do it.’” I let that set while Tommy turned whiter than the underbelly of fish. Needed to slow this charging bull some while I got my wits returning home between my ears.

  I said to him I could not on account of my debts, and just like that he asked for the notes. Sure enough he comes back with my debts paid, and my assembled family was in agreement that Tommy was good folk. Afore I could even foster a second thought, I was marrying Tommy Lincoln and moving to the clearing across the Ohio River from my kin. Was so cold seem like the wolves ate the sheep just for their wool. Offin we went nohow.

  “We crossed the Ohio at Thompson’s Ferry, just opposite the mouth of the Anderson River in Indiana. That was a big entry point for the settlers that come through Kaintuck. The charges were prescribed by law about this time, and though times it feels I cannot remember my own name, I still recall it was a dollar for a horse and wagon, 25 cents for a man and horse, 12 ½ cents for great cattle, 12 ½ cents for foot passengers. Children were free.

  “Didn’t take long for John D. to start his squirming so I held on to his arm with white knuckles, and I’ll never forget his face. I looked him square in the eye, said clear, ‘John D, don’t you go and lighten my load by falling off this boat into the Ohio River.’ “He sat froze like he was plucked straight from a blizzard, Mr. Herndon!

  The girls had eyes like pies. They ain’t never been but a few miles from Liztown, and now they were crossing the Ohio with flatboats trailing one another like ducklings. Then we heard it afore we seen it, whistling right into the ear of the Lord, so loud. Was a side-winder steamer and them kids stretched in all directions, trying to see it all from their disappearing little world. I felt right then that I done them good.

  “Was real relief on Tommy Lincoln, getting me across the river. Seemed to please him a great deal. Looking back I could see Negros loading their masters into a river skiff, but I just look forward, Mr. Herndon. And do you reckon what I saw, cause it was but one thing? Trees. Hundred-foot-high wall of trees.

  “Abe told me later that he never passed through a harder experience than he did from Thompson’s Ferry to the open-faced camp Tommy built on his claim. Tom may a showed Abe how to swing an axe back in Kaintuck, but the boy learned to use it right then to clear a path for the Lincolns to get through mostly thick brush. Called them roughs. Called ‘em that for good reason.

  “It was another three years afore Tommy brung me there. The roads weren’t our trouble, it was the four horse wagon load of goods. I packed in a table, a set of chairs, a clothespress, chest a drawers, a flax wheel, soap kittle, cooking pots, an pewter dishes, lot a goods like bedclothes and kitchenware, feather pillers, homespun blankets an patchwork quilts that all made a heap a difference in a backwoods cabin. This is the bureau I took to Indiana in 1819 — cost $45 in Kaintuck (Mrs. L points to the bureau.) Between all of us and the property, there wasn’t room to cuss a cat without getting fur in your mouth.

  “Tommy done his share of fussing about it as we heaved and rocked, sometimes just to gain a few inches, iffin that. He got right sure we should unload a few trunks, to which I could only offer kind words for his effort to push on, and shine a smile at him. Eventually he got cured of the idea and give up. He waited a long time for my company! Was clear from the git that Nancy wasn’t much for sassing back. Tommy wasn’t quite sure what’s to become of his old self! Was good fun, Mr. Herndon, having a man with Virginia decency.

  “I once asked Tommy which of us, me or Nancy, he liked best. Tommy paused on that one a long time. Finally he took hold of my hand, looked straight on me, solemn as an owl. Said he looked on it like a man choosing between two horses: one that kicks and the other that bites. That’s what Tommy done for me – kept my belly aching from his antics and yarns.

  “Tommy said settlers of Indiana called the area Little Pigeon Creek for the abundance of the critters. I seen the upper branches start to wave sorta frantic like, then the sky turn dark from black clouds. Seem like a storm, ‘ceptin for a squawking that might deafen us all were it to carry on much further. I never seen nothing like it back in Kaintuck. Come to figure what turn day to night was miles and miles of pigeons, far as I could see. The country was wild still, the panther’s scream filled the night with fear. Ground hogs were snorting and squealing in the brush. Here I took my babes out of Liztown, the county seat, and we seen wolves, and a paw print that look like someone set a kittle right there in the river bank.

  I slept with Tommy’s rifle aside me, figuring if whatever made the paw print come along, this gun ain’t gonna kill it, just gonna make it mad. I struggled all night figuring what to do, settling on nothing, just froze like, listening to the howling and screaming, and rustling from all directions. Tommy and the children were sleeping along like they were somehow protected.

  “Sunrise wasn’t much help. The forest turned from black to gray. Now I could see critters swarming instead of just hearing them. In gray daylight least I seen what was to eat me and my babes afore it happened. That was the comfort daybreak give me. Lord a-Mighty, what I done to my babes I was to fret. Tommy was funning the children with his yarns and such when sudden like he draw quiet as field mouse during Sunday sermon. Should a had some sense a trouble when he declare, quiet-like to me alone, that we were gittin close. I smelled it afore I seen it. Sheep and swine were running unpenned, their paws coated in mud and dung. I think to myself then, Nancy’s babies!

  “We come through snow and branches as we contended with a long and dreary winter. Finally seen the Lincoln cabin coming into sight. My chillern seen Sairy and Abe standing in front. They must a heard us coming along. Betsy asked if they were runaway slaves. Their skin was earthen and they were tattered and scared like. They were kin with wilderness.

  She
took the children

  and mixed us together

  like hasty pudding,

  and has not known

  us apart since.

  2

  Hasty Pudding

  “When we landed in Indiana, Mr. Lincoln had erected a good log cabin. Tolerably comfortable. The country was wild—and desolate.

  “Tommy, Abe and Denny (Writer clarifies - ‘Denny’ is Lincoln’s cousin, Dennis Hanks. Lineal connection unclear.) Them boys had already cleared a field for planting come spring. I seen charred tree stumps strewn about the winding rows. Considered the amount of food we’d coax out of it—peas, corn, carrots, potatoes and onions. I figured we would do right fine.

  “Abe was then young, so was his Sister. He was about nine years of age and Sairy was about eleven. Tom told me on the road that she’d been grieving for Nancy and had purt near cried herself dry long afore he left to come and get me. My heart hurt for her. Couldn’t get through them trees slower it seem then, I was fixin to git to Nancy’s babes the more Tommy speak on them.

  “It was December and cruel winds whipped through the trees. As we drew closer, I could see that Abe’s hands were blue with cold. He was so thin, like a skeleton, and his frayed deerskin pants barely covered his knees. Both young’uns were filthy and wrung out, so dirty they looked dark skinned. Abe was nothing but a peculiar-looking skeleton—wild, ragged and dirty, but without the emptiness in his eyes the way his sister done.

  “Might a buried Sairy right alongside her Mama had much more time gone by. May a been fitting as it goes. Sairy was Nancy’s little shadow, choring buckets soon as she was upright, and keeping each other good company generally. Any time I seen them in Liztown Sairy was about hitched to Nancy’s knee. They were sisters like, same brown hair and dark skin with similar blueish green eyes, similar in the face too, sharp and angular, each with a prominent forehead. Purt beauties! So sudden like that, Nancy’s gone and poor Sairy is alone in the wilderness.