[4] Noteworthy ancestors include Samuel's grandson, Mordecai (1686–1736) who married Hannah Salter from a prominent political family, and made a name for himself in Pennsylvania society as a wealthy landowner and ironmaster.

[5] Mordecai and Hannah's son, John Lincoln (1716–1788) settled in Rockingham County, Virginia and built a large, prosperous farm nestled in the Shenandoah Valley.

[6][10] He amassed an estate of 5,544 acres of prime Kentucky land, realizing the bounty as advised by Daniel Boone, a relative of the Lincoln family.

[6] In May 1786, eight-year-old Thomas Lincoln witnessed the murder of his father by Native Americans "... when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest."

Mordecai, at fifteen the oldest son, sent Josiah running to the settlement half a mile away for help while he raced to a nearby cabin.

Peering out of a crack between logs, he saw an Indian sneaking out of the forest toward his eight-year-old brother, Thomas, who was still sitting in the field beside their father's body.

Mordecai picked up a rifle, aimed for a silver pendant on the Native American's chest, and killed him before he reached the boy.

"The tragedy," wrote historian David Herbert Donald, "abruptly ended his prospects of being an heir of a well-to-do Kentucky planter; he had to earn his board and keep."

[17] In 1806, he ferried merchandise on a flatboat to New Orleans down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers on behalf of the Bleakley & Montgomery store in Elizabethtown.

[12][15] Their first child, a daughter named Sarah Lincoln, was born on February 10, 1807, near Elizabethtown, Kentucky, at Mill Creek.

[15][22] By early 1809, Lincoln bought another farm, 300-acre (1.2 km2), near Hodgenville at Nolin Creek, located 14 miles southeast of Elizabethtown and near the home of Betsy (Elizabeth) and Thomas Sparrow.

He did not have the money to pay attorney's fees to resolve title disputes, such as liens against previous owners and survey errors.

[26] Reluctant to discuss the extreme poverty of his youth, Abraham Lincoln quoted Gray's Elegy in 1860, saying his life could be summed up as "The short and simple annals of the poor."

Abraham recounted years later, in a discussion with homeless boys in New York, that he had been poor and could remember "when my toes stuck out through my broken shoes in the winter; when my arms were out at the elbows; when I shivered with the cold.

[33] On December 2, 1819, he married her and she brought her three children, Elizabeth, Matilda, and John, to join Abe, Sarah, and Dennis Hanks to make a new family of eight.

As Abraham became an adolescent, his father grew more and more to depend on him for the "farming, grubbing, hoeing, making fences" necessary to keep the family afloat.

[36]Lincoln had a restless nature, and when John Hanks, a cousin who had once lived with the Lincolns, moved to Illinois and sent back glowing reports of fertile prairie that didn't need the backbreaking work of clearing forest before crops could be planted, he sold his Indiana land early in 1830[37] and moved first to Macon County, Illinois, west of Decatur and eventually to Coles County in 1831.

The homestead site on Goosenest Prairie, about 10 miles (16 km) south of Charleston, Illinois, is preserved as the Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site, although his original saddlebag log cabin was lost after being disassembled and shipped to Chicago for display at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

Due to his failing eyesight and likely declining health, Lincoln relied on Abraham to perform work needed to run the farm.

"[41] Both Burlingame and Donald agree that Thomas struck his son if he appeared overly neglectful of his chores, or if he thrust himself into adult conversations.

It required an immense effort for Thomas, who earned three shillings a day for manual labor or made a little more when he did carpentry or cabinetmaking, to accumulate enough money to buy his first farm.

Although Abraham provided financial assistance on a few occasions and once visited Thomas during a bout of ill-health, when he was on his deathbed Abraham sent word to a stepbrother to: "Say to him that if we could meet now, it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant; but that if it be his lot to go now, he will soon have a joyous meeting with many loved ones gone before; and where the rest of us, through the help of God, hope ere-long to join them.

Aside from the strained and distant relationship between father and son, Abraham's actions may have been influenced by a "painful midlife crisis" and depression.

[47] David Herbert Donald stated in his 1995 book Lincoln that "In all his published writings, and indeed, even in reports of hundreds of stories and conversations, he had not one favorable word to say about his father.

[51] A 1970 episode of Daniel Boone, although fictionalized, portrays the courtship of Thomas Lincoln (played by actor Burr DeBenning) and Nancy Hanks (Marianna Hill).