When Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, present-day Hodgenville was known as Hodgen’s Mill, a settlement established in 1789 on land owned by Robert Hodgen, who operated the mill and whose community also included a tavern and a store. Due east stood the Kirkpatrick stone house, one of the few places Lincoln later recalled from his early childhood in Kentucky. Hodgen was one of the first justices of the Hardin County Court, served as sheriff of Hardin County, and was a member of the state Legislature. He died almost one year to the day after Lincoln’s birth. Eight years later, his widow Sarah Larue Hodgen and their two sons, Isaac and John, petitioned the Hardin County Court to establish a town on Robert Hodgen’s land, to be called Hodgenville, and the settlement officially became Hodgenville on February 9, 1818. By then the Lincolns had settled north of the Ohio River in southern Indiana. In a June 2, 1909, letter to commission chairman Chris M. Mather, Robert T. Lincoln expressed his high appreciation for the services of the Lincoln Monument Commission and for the tribute to his father at Hodgenville, saying that such honor from the people of the county and state where Abraham Lincoln spent his earliest years gave him very great gratification and would be long remembered for the cordial good-will shown during his visit. A Lincoln Heritage Trail chronology notes Abraham Lincoln’s birth at Sinking Spring Farm in 1809, his family’s move from Kentucky in 1816, his 1841 visit to Joshua Speed at Farmington in Louisville, his 1842 marriage to Mary Todd of Lexington, the Lincoln family’s 1847 visit to Lexington on the way to his only term in Congress, his election as President of the United States in 1860, and his assassination at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., in 1865.