President Abraham Lincoln Birthplace
National Park
It took us two separate visits, neither planned, to see President Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace and Childhood Home. In pouring rain, we pulled off the highway, driving north on the 65, in Kentucky, following brown historical signs to Knob Creek Place, to this small log cabin, which housed the future president for about five years, beginning when he was a little over two years old.
President Lincoln’s Boyhood Home at Knob Creek
His “birthplace” is actually a memorial, the first in the nation, to the President. It was built between 1909-1911, in a location believed to be near or at the site of his birth. We fortunately, on a much brighter day, without rain, to have a very well informed Park Ranger walk around the site, greatly enhancing the visit, by sharing the following information:
Approaching the Memorial
The walkway toward Sinking Spring, remembered by the President, which aided in the Memorial site selection
The Spring
“Built on the knoll above the sinking spring where many believe the Lincoln cabin originally stood, the Memorial Building at Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park was constructed between 1909 and 1911 in an effort by the Lincoln Farm Association to commemorate the life and accomplishments of the sixteenth President of the United States and to protect his ‘birth cabin.’
Exterior Side View with Three of the Sixteen Windows
Rooted in the architectural forms of ancient Greece and Rome, the Memorial Building was designed by early twentieth century prominent architect John Russell Pope and constructed of Connecticut pink granite and Tennessee marble. Pope’s design of the building included many symbolisms related to Abraham Lincoln, including fifty-six steps leading up to the building to represent the fifty-six years of Lincoln’s life. Sixteen windows in the building and sixteen rosettes on the interior ceiling are there to remind visitors that Lincoln was the sixteenth president. The Beaux-Arts building was designed specifically to house the “symbolic” birth cabin of Abraham Lincoln on the site of Lincoln’s birth.
There is nothing inside, as this is a Memorial, not the actual log home.
The Cabin
Constructed in the manner as the President’s Father would have built the Family Home
In 1906 the Lincoln Farm Association began a fund raising campaign for the project in which over 100,000 Americans donated nearly $350,000. The Norcross Brothers Construction Company of Worcester, Massachusetts won the contract for constructing the Memorial Building in 1907 with a bid of $237,101 and construction began on February 12, 1909, the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, with the laying of the cornerstone by President Theodore Roosevelt. After over two years of construction President, and Lincoln Farm Association board member, William Howard Taft dedicated the Memorial Building and enshrined “birth cabin” on November 9, 1911, before a crowd of 3,000 people.”
The Rosettes
I was amused that the plaque stated that the corner stone had been laid by President Roosevelt, no first name.
Kate Enjoying the Park
