Lincoln's Indiana Years

We tend to think of Abraham Lincoln as a man of Kentucky and Illinois, but the years that shaped him most were spent right here in southern Indiana. From the age of seven to twenty one, fourteen of his most formative years, Lincoln grew up in Spencer County. He arrived a child and left a young man, having buried his mother, Nancy Hanks, in this very soil, learned to wield an axe, and read every book he could borrow by firelight.

This plaza, set inside Lincoln State Park, marks those years with plaques tracing milestones from his Indiana boyhood. The park itself was created in nineteen thirty two as a memorial to the mother Lincoln lost here. The rail splitter who would hold the Union together first grew tall on this ground.