15: WHERE GREATNESS WAS BORN

At 4:10pm on June 6, 2014, we arrived at the Hodgenville, Kentucky birthplace site of our 16th President Abraham Lincoln. It was hot, we had been on the road since 4:30am, and we had about 45 minutes to tour the site before it closed for the day. I was pumped and ready to go!

As I was carried from the Avenger, I got my first glimpse of Lincoln’s birthplace and I was astonished. If my jaws could move, my mouth would have fallen open. I thought for sure that I would lay my eyes on a log cabin; but instead, all I saw was a granite building situated above a bunch of steps.

Before we attempted to climb the numerous steps up to the building, I was carried on a pathway that was advertised to lead visitors to the actual sinking spring. Once there, we saw an opening in the ground that gave us a view of running water. While this area of the property didn’t seem very significant, it was the inspiration that Lincoln’s father, Thomas, used to name his place the ‘Sinking Spring Farm’. While I was held over the opening, I had a sinking feeling that I might be dropped into the water and disappear forever underground.

I was relieved when I was carried away from that spring and back towards the birth site. We paused for a moment and looked up at what was called the Memorial Building at the top of the steps. We had heard that inside the memorial was the Lincoln birth cabin and that it was housed in the building to protect it from the elements. There were 56 granite steps in all, one each for the age of Lincoln at the time of his death; and I was happy that I would be carried up each one of them. I did worry, however, that my overweight and out-of-shape photographer might have a heart attack on the way up and drop me to my death.

While it took some effort for me to be carried up the steps, especially in the late afternoon heat, we made it through the memorial’s entrance where I got my first look at the birthplace cabin inside. As my eyes first took in the one-room cabin, it was as though angelic music would go off any second. This was it – this was the cabin where Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809. My first goal was to stand on the edge of the window; or at least touch one of the wooden logs; even though a chain barricade was in place to keep bobble heads from getting too close. But at the moment when I was scheming about how to get closer to the cabin, we got the bad news: this cabin was a symbolic cabin and was not the one that Abraham Lincoln was actually born in.

Even though the cabin was a facsimile of the real thing, I paused for a moment to reflect on what actually happened near this very spot on that cold February morning in 1809. This replica cabin did symbolize the one that was at this site over 105 years earlier in the dangerous frontier of Kentucky. When Nancy Lincoln gave birth to her second child , a son named Abraham, there was no way she could have known that a legend was born that day. Greatness was brought into the world on this site; a small baby who would grow into a man that would change the entire nation; and that man would be killed for his beliefs. That man was Abraham Lincoln – the most illustrious American and the greatest President to ever live; and that’s including Thomas Jefferson. Dang, did I just say that?

At the moment that I had finished my vision of Lincoln’s birth, we heard the ranger yell out that it was 5:00pm and the building was closing for the day. Once outside, I was able to take a final look at the Memorial Building with a better understanding of Abraham Lincoln and his birth at this site.

Located roughly ten miles from Lincoln’s birthplace site was the place where the Lincoln family moved when young Abraham was two years old. On the route to the Lincoln’s ‘Knob Creek Farm’, I got to ride in the front seat without being in my case for the first time. That gave me a great opportunity to see the same Kentucky that the Lincoln’s saw when they moved from Sinking Spring Farm: trees, fields and an occasional dead animal along the roadside.

Since the Knob Creek Farm site was part of the entire Abraham Lincoln Birthplace Historic Park, we knew that the buildings would be closed for the day. That proved to be okay because the small cabin that was there was once again a replica; it only represented the Lincoln’s home and was never occupied by the future President.

On this site, however, young Abraham lived, played, learned and worked from 1811 until 1816. His younger brother, Thomas, was born and died at the cabin that once graced this site. Unlike the replica Sinking Spring birthplace cabin, the cabin that represented Lincoln’s Knob Creek Farm was actually built in 1800 and was owned and occupied by the Gollaher family during the time Lincoln lived at Knob Creek. Ironically, it was Austin Gollaher who saved young Abraham from drowning in the swollen waters of Knob Creek by his quick thinking and by extending a tree branch to the struggling Lincoln.

My photographer and his wife Vicki were exhausted from a full agenda of Presidential sites. Our day started before daybreak in Michigan and we arrived at the Drury Inn in Bowling Green, Kentucky around 7:30pm. Although we had arrived in time for the free dinner of hot dogs, baked potatoes, and ice cream – my photographer complained that the hot dogs weren’t from Zimmerman’s in Marine City, Michigan. After all, his mother Marjorie once said of Zimmerman’s Meat Market: “Zimmerman’s is the best, you can’t beat their meat!” With that quote fresh in my mind, I took my place next to the TV where I tried to clear my head and envision what I would experience the following day: Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage. “In Tennessee, you can’t beat their heat”.