Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Navigation
Read About Abraham Lincoln
Vocabulary and References
Online Resources
Fun Facts About Lincoln
The Gettysburg Address Scavenger Hunt
Ways to Participate in the Bicentennial
Fun Facts About Abraham
Lincoln and His Times
Families on the frontier often couldn’t pay for schooling
with cash, so they gave the teacher potatoes, vegetables
or animal hides as payment.
Lincoln wrote with a “quill pen” made from a goose or turkey feather. It was
dipped in ink made from blackberry roots or a kind of iron.
When Lincoln was a boy, he wore a coonskin cap. As an adult he wore a
stovepipe hat.
When Lincoln was a young boy, he almost drowned in a creek but was saved by a
friend. He did not know how to swim.
The Bible was the only book the Lincoln family owned. Lincoln borrowed books
from neighbors.
When he opened his own general store, Lincoln borrowed money to get his
business started. The store failed and it took 17 years to pay off the debt.
When Lincoln was postmaster of New Salem, he carried letters in his hat.
Lincoln was prone to bouts of depression.
Lincoln’s first love, Ann Rutledge, died of fever.
Lincoln is the only president to hold a patent. He invented a device to help boats
float over sandbars.
In Springfield, which Lincoln called his hometown later in life, there were no
sidewalks, just dirt roads.
In Springfield, the first train traveled through the town in 1842.
As a lawyer, Lincoln would be on the road for three months at a time, traveling on
dirt roads by horseback.
During his 1860 campaign, Lincoln was depicted as “The Rail Splitter,” someone
who worked hard and was familiar with the frontier life.
During Lincoln’s lifetime, the telegraph was invited.
The penny was the first American coin with a President’s picture on it. It was
created in 1909, on the 100th anniversary of his birth and exactly 100 years ago.
34 American cities have been named after President Lincoln.
The face of Abraham Lincoln is one of four presidents carved into the side of
Mount Rushmore.
Robert Todd Lincoln, Lincoln’s eldest son, became Secretary of War under
President James Garfield. By a strange twist of fate, Robert Lincoln was present
at the assassinations of President Garfield in 1881 and President McKinley in
1901.
Lincoln’s wife Mary Todd Lincoln suffered greatly from the loss of both her
husband and her sons. She was institutionalized for mental illness for a few
months in 1875. Then for a few years, she traveled Europe. In 1879, she fell and
severed her spinal cord. She died in 1882.
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