On December 12, 1808 Thomas Lincoln paid $200 cash for the 348 acre Sinking Spring farm.

Lincoln’s Birthplace: Sinking Spring Farm, Hodgenville, Kentucky.

Lincoln’s birth date: February 12, 1809.

The Lincoln family later moved to the Knob Creek farm, 10 miles northeast from the Sinking Spring birthplace.

When asked about his Kentucky years, Lincoln explained that, “My earliest recollection, however is of the “Knob Creek place.” Lincoln also recalled planting pumpkin seed in the fertile bottomland of the Knob Creek only to see them washed from the ground by a flash flood.

Lincoln briefly attended Caleb Hazel’s “ABC school” or as Lincoln called it a “blab school” for the constant recitation.

Austin Gollaher, schoolmate and playmate to Lincoln once rescued Abe from drowning in the swollen floodwaters of Knob Creek.

Robert Collier, publisher of Collier’s Weekly, purchased the farm where Lincoln was born on April 18, 1906, Collier along with Mark Twain, William Jennings Bryan, Samual Gompers and others formed the Lincoln Farm Association to preserve Lincoln’s birthplace and establish a memorial to the nation’s 16th President.

During 1911 the Lincoln Farm Association completed the granite and marble building to hold the birthplace cabin and five years later donated the cabin memorial and the farm to the federal government.

On November 6, 2001 the National Park System accepted the Lincoln Boyhood Home at Knob Creek as a second unit to the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site of Hodgenville, Kentucky.