Early Life and Career of Abraham Lincoln

Early Life And Career Of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a one-room log cabin in LaRue County, Kentucky, on a farm near Hodgenville. Lincoln was named after his grandfather, who died in 1786 when he was ambushed and shot by a Native American while clearing a field.

Lincoln lived in Kentucky, until a land dispute forced his father to move to Indiana, when Lincoln was a boy. There Lincoln lost his mother at age 9, and gained a new step-mother. As was common on the frontier, Lincoln received little formal education. In his young adulthood, he moved with his family to Illinois, where he worked as a boatman, store clerk, surveyor, militia soldier, and ultimately a lawyer. He was elected to the Illinois Legislature, and to the United States Congress from Illinois. In 1842, he married Mary Todd; they had four sons.

Read more about Early Life And Career Of Abraham Lincoln:  Illinois Legislature (1834–1842), Lincoln The Inventor, Courtships, Marriage, and Family

Famous quotes containing the words abraham lincoln, early, life, career and/or lincoln:

    “Still let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result.”
    —Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)

    “Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.”
    —James Thurber (1894–1961)

    “We swim, day by day, on a river of delusions, and are effectually amused with houses and towns in the air, of which the men about us are dupes. But life is a sincerity.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “I began my editorial career with the presidency of Mr. Adams, and my principal object was to render his administration all the assistance in my power. I flattered myself with the hope of accompanying him through [his] voyage, and of partaking in a trifling degree, of the glory of the enterprise; but he suddenly tacked about, and I could follow him no longer. I therefore waited for the first opportunity to haul down my sails.”
    —William Cobbett (1762–1835)

    “My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families—second families, perhaps I should say.”
    —Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)