ary shelter, and as such it would have sufficed for
good weather in the summer season. But it was a rude provision for the
winds and snows of an Indiana winter. It illustrates Thomas Lincoln's
want of energy, that the family remained housed in this primitive camp
for nearly a whole year. He must, however, not be too hastily blamed for
his dilatory improvement. It is not likely that he remained altogether
idle. A more substantial cabin was probably begun, and, besides, there
was the heavy work of clearing away the timber--that is, cutting down
the large trees, chopping them into suitable lengths, and rolling them
together into great log-heaps to be burned, or splitting them into rails
to fence the small field upon which he managed to raise a patch of corn
and other things during the ensuing summer.

Thomas Lincoln's arrival was in the autumn of 1816. That same winter
Indiana was admitted to the Union as a State. There were as yet no roads
worthy of the name to or from the settlement formed by himself and seven
or eight neighbors at various distances. The village of Gentryville was
not even begun. There was no sawmill to saw lumber. Breadstuff could be
had only by sending young Abraham, on horseback, seven miles, with a bag
of corn to be ground on a hand grist-mill. In the course of two or three
years a road from Corydon to Evansville was laid out, running past the
Lincoln farm; and perhaps two or three years afterward another from
Rockport to Bloomington crossing the former. This gave rise to
Gentryville. James Gentry entered the land at the cross-roads. Gideon
Romine opened a small store, and their joint efforts succeeded in
getting a post-office established from which the village gradually grew.
For a year after his arrival Thomas Lincoln remained a mere squatter.
Then he entered the quarter-section (one hundred and sixty acres) on
which he opened his farm, and made some payments on his entry, but only
enough in eleven years to obtain a patent for one half of it.

About the time that he moved into his new cabin, relatives and friends
followed from Kentucky, and some of them in turn occupied the half-faced
camp. In the ensuing autumn much sickness prevailed in the Pigeon Creek
settlement. It was thirty miles to the nearest doctor, and several
persons died, among them Nancy Hanks Lincoln, the mother of young
Abraham. The mechanical skill of Thomas was called upon to make the
coffins, the necessary lumber for which had to