Typical of his class, John Lincoln learned a trade, in his case weaving, to practice alongside the subsistence farming necessary on the colonial frontier.

The Lincoln home farm on Hiester's Creek, in what is now Exeter Township, Berks County, was left to John's half-brothers, the children of his father's second marriage.

In 1743, John Lincoln married Rebekah Morris (1720–1806), daughter of Enoch Flowers of Caernarvon Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

In 1780, Lincoln sold his land on Mill Creek, and in 1781 he moved his family to Kentucky, then a district of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Lincoln settled near Hughes' Station on Floyd's Fork and began clearing land, planting corn, and building a cabin.

[14] One day in May 1786, Lincoln was working in his field with his three sons when he was shot from the nearby forest and fell to the ground.

[3][7] Tradition states that Lincoln was buried next to his cabin, which is now the site of Long Run Baptist Church and Cemetery near Eastwood, Kentucky.

She moved the family away from the Ohio River, to Washington County, where the country was more thickly settled and there was less danger of a Native American attack.

Under the law then operating, Mordecai Lincoln, as the eldest son, inherited two-thirds of his father's estate when he reached the age of twenty-one, with Bathsheba receiving one-third.