Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v1.djvu/35

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LINEAGE, PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD
5

There were eight families in all, and these, when they arrived to within twenty-five or thirty miles southeast of Crab Orchard, were attacked by Indians, and some of the party were wounded, and one woman taken prisoner. These immigrants settled in Jefferson and Washington Counties, Kentucky, but the specific settlement of Abraham Lincoln is somewhat obscured by doubt. One excellent biographer fixes the location in Mercer County, but his authority therefor does not appear. Several others, repeating each other, name Floyd's Creek in what is now known as Bullitt County, and, in point of fact, Abraham Lincoln did on May 29, 1780, enter four hundred acres of land on Long Run, a branch of Floyd's fork of Salt River, whence there is reason to suppose that upon that land he made his settlement. Hon. J. L. Nail, a great-grandson of the pioneer, and a grandson of his daughter Nancy, who married William Brumfield, avers[1] that his ancestor settled at the present site of Louisville, and adduces in support of his statement the concurrent evidence of his great-grandmother, the wife of the pioneer, and who lived to the great age of one hundred and ten years, and of his grandmother; also of his great-uncle, Mordecai Lincoln, all of whom he has heard talk of the subject frequently.

After settling in Kentucky, there were added to his family two daughters, Mary, who afterwards married Ralph Crume, and Nancy, who thereafter married William Brumfield; and in 1784, while he was at work in the clearing, attended only by his youngest son, Thomas, the father of the President, he was fatally shot by an

  1. This history was written in 1892.