Sarah Bush Lincoln
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln (1788-1869) was the second wife of Thomas Lincoln and stepmother of President of the United States Abraham Lincoln. She was born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky to Christopher and Hannah Bush. She married her first husband, Daniel Johnston, in 1806, and they had three children. When he died in 1816 she was left penniless.
Thomas Lincoln had met Sarah while living in Kentucky. After his first wife, Nancy Hanks, died in 1818, Thomas married Sarah in 1819 and brought her and her children to his farm in Indiana. She treated the two children from Thomas's first marriage the same as her own, earning the lasting affection of Abraham, who always addressed her as "Mother." He visited her "every year or two," and was apparently closer to her than to his father.[1] After Thomas died, Lincoln maintained the family's farm in Coles County, Illinois for her and supported her until his death. Their final visit occurred on January 31 and February 1, 1861, just before Lincoln left Illinois for the White House.
The homestead where she and Thomas lived is preserved as the Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site. Sarah is buried next to Thomas in nearby Shiloh Cemetery, just south of Lerna, Illinois. Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center in Coles County was named after her.
This page includes text from the public domain page on Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln maintained by the National Park Service
[edit] External links
- Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln from the Lincoln Home National Historic Site webpage.
- Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Systems
[edit] References
- ^ Donald, (1995) pp. 28, 152.
