Michiko shimizu biography of abraham lincoln

After a land title dispute forced the family to leave in , they relocated to Knob Creek farm , eight miles to the north. By , Thomas Lincoln , Abraham's father, had lost most of his land in Kentucky in legal disputes over land titles. Their land became part of Spencer County, Indiana , when it was formed in Lincoln spent his formative years, from the age of 7 to 21, on the family farm in Little Pigeon Creek Community of Spencer County, in Southwestern Indiana.

As was common on the frontier, Lincoln received a meager formal education, the accumulation of just under 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 October , two years after they arrived in Indiana, nine-year-old Lincoln lost his birth mother, Nancy, who died after a brief illness known as milk sickness.

Lincoln's new stepmother and her three children joined the Lincoln family in Indiana in late A second tragedy befell the family in January , when Sarah Lincoln Grigsby, Abraham's sister, died in childbirth. In March , year-old Lincoln joined his extended family in a move to Illinois.

As Shimizu Michiko writes, however, there were actually many kinds of domestic servants in large households.

After helping his father establish a farm in Macon County, Illinois , Lincoln set out on his own in the spring of Lincoln settled in the village of New Salem where he worked as a boatman, store clerk, surveyor, and militia soldier during the Black Hawk War , and became a lawyer in Illinois. He was elected to the Illinois Legislature in and was reelected in , , , and In November , 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 He was elected president of the United States on November 6,