The Lincoln family joined the westward movement from Virginia into Kentucky, influenced in part by frontier tales associated with Daniel Boone, as Captain Abraham Lincoln, a veteran of the American Revolution and grandfather of President Abraham Lincoln, moved with his wife Bersheba Herring to Hughes Station in Jefferson County in 1781 and later to Long Run Creek on land they had cleared. In 1786, while Abraham Lincoln and his sons Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas were in the fields, a small band of Indians attacked, killing Captain Lincoln instantly; tradition holds that Josiah ran to Hughes Station for help, Mordecai reached the cabin for his father’s gun and shot one of the attackers, and young Thomas remained beside his father’s body until help arrived. Bersheba then raised the family, moving with the children to Beech Fork in Nelson County after five months, while Mordecai inherited the family lands and possessions and Thomas, the youngest son, remained with the family until age 25, became a skilled carpenter and cabinet maker, and in 1803 bought a farm on Mill Creek in Hardin County before moving to Elizabethtown for carpentry work building a flatboat. Thomas Lincoln later courted Nancy Hanks, who was born in Virginia on February 5, 1784, and after her father’s death was brought by her mother Lucy Shipley Hanks to Kentucky, where she was raised in the household of Rachel and Richard Berry Sr. at Beechland. Thomas and Nancy were married on June 12, 1806, after he used credit earned through flatboat work to purchase wedding materials, secured a marriage bond in Washington County with Richard Berry Jr. as guardian for Nancy, and were wed in Springfield by Reverend Jesse Head according to the rites and ceremonies of the Methodist Episcopal Church, followed by a wedding feast remembered for its frontier abundance.