My parents
were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second families,
perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a
family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams, and others
in Macon County, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln,
emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky about 1781 or
1782, where a year or two later he was killed by the Indians, not in
battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest.
His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County,
Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New England family
of the same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of
Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon,
Abraham, and the like.

My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age, and he
grew up literally without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is
now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. We reached our new home
about the time that State came into the Union. It was a wild region, with
many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up.
There were some schools, so called, but no qualification was ever required
of a teacher beyond "readin', writin', and cipherin"' to the Rule of
Three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn
in the neighborhood he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely
nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age I
did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to
the Rule of Three, but that was all. I have not been to school since. The
little advance I now have upon this store of education I have picked up
from time to time under the pressure of necessity.

I was raised to farm work, which I continued till I was twenty-two. At
twenty-one I came to Illinois, Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, at
that time in Sangamon, now in Menard County, where I remained a year as a
sort of clerk in a store. Then came the Black Hawk war; and I was elected
a captain of volunteers, a success which gave me more pleasure than any I
have had since. I went the campaign, was elected, ran for the Legislature
the same year (1832), and was beaten--the only time I ever have been
beaten by the people. The next and three succeeding biennial elections I
was elected to the Legislature. I was not a candidate afterward. During