14 Facts About Nancy Lincoln

Nancy Hanks Lincoln was the mother of US President Abraham Lincoln.

When Spencer County was formed in 1818, the Nancy Lincoln Homestead lay within its current boundaries.

Nancy Lincoln died from milk sickness or consumption in 1818 at the Little Pigeon Creek Community in Spencer County when Abraham was nine years old.

At that time, Nancy Lincoln went to live with her mother, now Lucy Hanks Sparrow, having married Henry Sparrow in Harrodsburg, Kentucky two or three years earlier.

At the home of Elizabeth and Thomas Sparrow, Nancy Lincoln would have learned the skills and crafts a woman needed on the frontier to cultivate crops and clothe and feed her family.

Nancy Lincoln learned to read the Bible and became an excellent seamstress, working at the Richard Berry home before her marriage.

Nancy Lincoln was brought to the home to work as a seamstress by her friend Polly Ewing Berry, the wife of Richard Berry Jr.

Nancy Lincoln proposed to her in his childhood home at what is Nancy Lincoln Homestead State Park or in the Francis Berry house in front of the fireplace.

In 1816, the year that Indiana became the 19th state, the Nancy Lincoln family moved to Spencer County in southern Indiana and proceeded to homestead at Little Pigeon Creek Settlement.

Nancy Lincoln was above the ordinary height in stature, weighed about 130 pounds, was slenderly built, and had much the appearance of one inclined to consumption.

Nancy Lincoln's skin was dark; hair dark brown; eyes gray and small; forehead prominent; face sharp and angular, with a marked expression for melancholy which fixed itself in the memory of all who ever saw or knew her.

Nancy Lincoln's headstone was purchased by P E Studebaker, an industrialist from South Bend, in 1878.

At least 20 unmarked and eight marked graves are at the site; Nancy Lincoln is buried next to Nancy Rusher Brooner, a neighbor who died a week before Nancy from milk sickness.

The bodies of my mother and Mrs Nancy Lincoln were conveyed to their graves on sleds.