Abraham Lincoln Employed

Abraham Lincoln lived northwest of here from 1816 to 1830 and worked circa 1825 as a hired hand for James Taylor. William Herndon, a Lincoln biographer, wrote that Lincoln told him it was "the roughest work a young man could be made to do." He butchered, did farm tasks, and operated Taylor's ferry across Anderson River, a key Ohio River transportation link. Lincoln built a rowboat and used it to carry people to waiting steamers on the Ohio River. On his first trip, he earned a dollar, which made the world seem "wider and fairer," according to reports of later remarks by Lincoln. He took a flatboat of goods to New Orleans in 1828. His work on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers helped to broaden his horizons.

Indiana · United States