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Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a one-room log cabin at Sinking Spring farm, south of Hodgenville, in Hardin County, Kentucky. After a land title dispute forced the family to leave, they relocated to Knob Creek farm, eight miles to the north. By 1814 Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's father, had lost most of his land in Kentucky in legal disputes over land titles. In 1816 Thomas and Nancy Lincoln, their nine-year-old daughter, Sarah, and seven-year-old Abraham moved to Indiana, where they settled in Hurricane Township, Perry County, Indiana. (Their land became part of Spencer County, Indiana, when it was formed in 1818.) Abraham spent his formative years, from the age of 7 to 21, on the family farm in Southern Indiana. As was common on the frontier, Lincoln received a meager formal education, the aggregate of which may have been less than twelve months. However, Lincoln continued to learn on his own from life experiences and through reading and reciting what he had read or heard from others. In 1818, two years after their arrival in Indiana, nine-year-old Lincoln lost his birth mother, Nancy, who died after a brief illness. Thomas returned to Kentucky the following year and married Sarah "Sally" Bush Johnston. Abraham's new step-mother and her three children joined the Lincoln family in Indiana in 1819. A second tragedy befell the family in 1828, when Abraham's sister, Sarah, died in childbirth. In 1830 twenty-one-year-old Abraham joined his extended family in a move to Illinois. After helping his father establish a farm in Macon County, Illinois, Lincoln set out on his own. Lincoln worked as a boatman, store clerk, surveyor, militia soldier, and became a lawyer in Illinois. He was elected to the Illinois Legislature in 1834, and was reelected in 1836, 1838, 1840, and 1844. In 1842, Lincoln married Mary Todd; the couple had four sons. In addition to his law career, Lincoln continued his involvement in politics, serving in the United States House of Representatives from Illinois in 1846. He was elected president of the United States in 1860. ==Ancestry== Lincoln's first known ancestor in America was Samuel Lincoln, who migrated from England to Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1638. Samuel's son, Mordecai, remained in Massachusetts, but Samuel's grandson, who was also named Mordecai, began the family's western migration. John Lincoln, Samuel's great-grandson, continued the westward journey. Born in New Jersey, John moved to Pennsylvania, then brought his family to Virginia. John's son, Captain Abraham Lincoln, who earned that rank for his service in the Virginia militia, was the future president's paternal grandfather and namesake. Born in Pennsylvania, he moved with his father and other family members to Virginia's Shenandoah Valley around 1766. The family settled near Linville Creek, in Augusta County, now Rockingham County, Virginia. Captain Lincoln bought the Virginia property from his father in 1773. Thomas Lincoln, the future president's father, was Captain Lincoln's son. Thomas was born in Virginia and moved west to Jefferson County, Kentucky, with his father, mother, and siblings in the 1780s, when he was about five years old.〔Warren, p. 4.〕 In 1786, at the age of forty-two, Captain Abraham was killed in an Indian ambush while working his field in Kentucky. Six-year-old Thomas witnessed his father's murder and may have ended up a victim if his brother, Mordecai, had not shot the attacker. After Captain Lincoln's death, Thomas's mother moved to Washington County, Kentucky, while Thomas worked at odd jobs in several Kentucky locations. Thomas also spent a year working in Tennessee, before settling with members of his family in Hardin County, Kentucky, in the early 1800s.〔Warren, p. 5.〕 The identity of Lincoln's maternal grandfather is unclear. In a conversation with William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner and one of his biographers, the president implied that his grandfather was "a Virginia planter or large farmer", but did not identify him. Lincoln felt that it was from this aristocratic grandfather that he had inherited "his power of analysis, his logic, his mental activity, his ambition, and all the qualities that distinguished him from the other members and descendants of the Hanks family."〔Burlingame, v. I, p. 2–3.〕 Lincoln's maternal grandmother, Lucy Shipley Hanks, migrated to Kentucky, with her daughter, Nancy. The debate continues over whether Lincoln's mother, Nancy, was born out of wedlock. Lucy and Nancy resided with Lucy's older sister, Rachael Shipley Berry, and her husband, Richard Berry Sr., in Washington County, Kentucky. Nancy is believed to have remained with the Berry family after her mother's marriage to Henry Sparrow, which took place several years after the women arrived in Kentucky.〔〔Warren, p. 6.〕 The Berry home was about a mile and a half from the home of Thomas Lincoln's mother; the families were neighbors for seventeen years. It was during this time when Thomas met Nancy.〔Warren, p. 6 and 8.〕 Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were married on June 12, 1806, at the Beech Fork settlement in Washington County, Kentucky. The Lincolns moved to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, following their marriage.〔Warren, p. 9.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Early life and career of Abraham Lincoln」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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