Lincoln Abe and the Fire Shovel

[donna]

When Abe Lincoln was a boy he sometimes got to go to a log schoolhouse. It was quite a distance from the family farm in Indiana. He did learn to red and write at the school. But to keep up and because he enjoyed reading and arithmetic so much, he would do school work at home by himself at night.

When young, Abe only had a few books. They included "Robinson Crusoe", "Pilgrim's Progress". "Esop's Fables", the "Bible", a "Life of Washington", and a small "History of the United States". He would read these books over and over and he knew many of them by heart and could repeat whole pages from them.

Part of his evening he would spend in writing and ciphering. His father, Thomas Lincoln was very poor and could seldom afford to buy paper and pens. So Abe had to get on without them. He would take the back of the broad wooden shovel to write on and a piece of charcoal for a pencil. When he had covered the shovel with words or sums of arithmetic, he would shave the shovel off clean and begin over again.

When his father complained that the shovel was getting thin, Abe would go out to the woods, cut down a tree, and make a new one.

From: "How Young "Abe" Used The Fire Shovel", By D.H. Montgomery, 1892.

This was reprinted in "The Kentucky Explorer Magazine", May issue 2017. Page 35.

 

[LincolnAbraham]

Part of his evening he would spend in writing and ciphering. His father, Thomas Lincoln was very poor and could seldom afford to buy paper and pens. So Abe had to get on without them. He would take the back of the broad wooden shovel to write on and a piece of charcoal for a pencil. When he had covered the shovel with words or sums of arithmetic, he would shave the shovel off clean and begin over again.

When his father complained that the shovel was getting thin, Abe would go out to the woods, cut down a tree, and make a new one.

Here is a guy who was no stranger to adversity.