White Pigeon church where Lincoln went to school

Title: White Pigeon church where Lincoln went to school
LC Subject: Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865
Photographer: McIntosh Stereopticon Co.
Description: In the log schoolhouse, which he could visit but little, he was taught only reading, writing, and elementary arithmetic. Among the people of the settlement, bush farmers and small tradesmen, he found none of uncommon intelligence or education; but some of them had a few books, which he borrowed eagerly. Thus he read and re-read Aesop’s Fables, learning to tell stories with a point and to argue by parables; he read Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim’s Progress, a short history of the United States, and Weem’s Life of Washington. To the town constable’s he went to read the Revised Statutes of Indiana. Every printed page that fell into his hands he would greedily devour, and his family and friends watched him with wonder, as the uncouth boy, after his daily work, crouched in a corner of the log cabin or outside under a tree, absorbed in a book while munching his supper of corn bread. In this manner he began to gather some knowledge, and sometimes he would astonish the girls with such startling remarks as that the earth was moving around the sun, and not the sun around the earth, and they marveled where “Abe” could have gotten such queer notions. Soon he also felt the impulse to write, not only making extracts from books he wished to remember, but also composing little essays of his own. First he sketched these with charcoal on a wooden shovel scraped white with a drawing-knife, or on basswood shingles. Then he transferred them to paper, which was a scarce commodity in the Lincoln household, taking care to cut his expressions close, so that they might not cover too much space, - a style forming method greatly to be commended. Seeing boys put a burning coal on the back of a wood turtle, he was moved to write on cruelty to animals. Seeing men intoxicated with whiskey, he wrote on temperance. In verse-making, too, he tried himself, in satire on persons offensive to him or others, - satire the rustic wit of which was not always fit for ears polite. Also political thoughts he put upon paper, and some of his pieces were even deemed good enough for publication in the county weekly.
Work Type: lantern slides
Date: 1915/1925
Identifier: P217:04:60
Rights: No Copyright - United States
Local Collection Name: Visual Instruction Department Lantern Slides, 1900-1940 (P 217)
Type: Image
Format: image/tiff
Set: OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center
Primary Set: OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center
Is Part Of: Set 8 - Abraham Lincoln
Institution: Oregon State University