104 Singing Valleys 



sons, Tom Lincoln, taught his son Abraham to hoe corn on 

 those very lands that were truly a "dark and bloody ground/' 

 Of that farm on Knob Creek, Lincoln said long afterward: 



I remember that old home very well. Our farm was composed 

 of three fields. It lay in the valley surrounded by high hills and 

 deep gorges. Sometimes when there came a big rain in the hills 

 the water would come down through the gorges and spread all 

 over the farm. The last thing that I remember of doing there was 

 one Saturday afternoon, the other boys planted the corn in what 

 we called the big field, it contained seven acres and I dropped the 

 pumpkin seed. I dropped two seeds every other hill and every 

 other row. The next Sunday morning there came a big rain in 

 the hills; it did not rain a drop in the valley, but the water coming 

 down through the gorges washed ground, corn, pumpkin seeds 

 and all clear off the ground. 



In 1816 the Lincolns left Kentucky for Indiana. Folks were 

 moving into the Ohio Valley and into lands sloping to it, as 

 seventy years earlier they had pushed into the Great Valley. 

 Once again the words "new land" had gone forth. Once again 

 there was the promise of taller corn at the end of a westward 

 trail. Fifteen years the Lincolns stayed in the cabin on Little 

 Pigeon Creek while Abraham grew to a lanky manhood. All 

 that time other pioneers were passing their farm going farther 

 west, into Illinois and into the wilderness around the head- 

 waters of the Missouri. 



"They say the land out there's the richest there is in this 

 country. . . . They say out there you can't keep the corn 

 from growing twenty feet high. . . . Here folks and cattle 

 have the milk-sick. But out there ..." 



Torn Lincoln couldn't stand it any longer. Hadn't the 

 Lincolns always followed that call to new and richer cornlands? 

 So they bundled the household goods on a wagon, Abraham 

 climbed atop and took the reins. He pulled his wagon into 

 line with a caravan heading for Illinois. Where was Illinois? 

 None of them knew, exactly. It was on ahead, that was enough. 

 And it was new land, and rich for corn. 



