Day 19 - Inching Closer LA to Toronto

April 2015 - Lexington KY

Leaving Nashville after breakfast.

Horse country!

On an impulse we decide to visit Lincoln's birthplace and log cabin.

Hodgenville - we are headed to the museum but stop in town to check out the sculpture of Lincoln. In the middle of a roundabout is Lincoln at a later age, and also a statue of Lincoln as a boy.

Gettysburg Address

This statue was created by noted New York sculptor Adolph A. Weinman (1870 – 1952) and placed on the square in 1909 to honor the Centennial of Lincoln’s Birth. 

 He created a six foot tall bronze statue of President Lincoln sitting in an Empire style chair. 

Across the square from the Weinman Lincoln statue is a statue of younger Lincoln. The boy Lincoln sculpture was created by the Daub-Firmin-Hendrickson Sculpture Group in 2008.

It portrays Abraham Lincoln shortly before his eighth birthday, leaning against an old tree trunk on his family farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky. He is reading a copy of Webster’s Elementary Spelling-book, and has a linen satchel filled with ears of corn, a fishing pole and his dog “Honey” sitting attentively close by. The sculpture is positioned on the Hodgenville Town Square so young Lincoln’s gaze is into the face of himself

 When we turned around we realized we were parked right outside the Lincoln Museum.

It is located in Hodgenville, KY three miles from Abraham Lincoln's birthplace on Sinking Spring Farm at the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park.

Some other sights around the square.

We weren't going to check out his birthplace but the curator at the museum said it was worth the three mile trip!
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park preserves two separate farm sites in LaRue County, Kentucky where Abraham Lincoln was born and lived until the age of seven. He was born at the Sinking Spring site south of Hodgenville and remained there until the family moved to the Knob Creek Farm northeast of Hodgenville when he was two years old, living there until he was seven years old. The Sinking Spring site is the location of the park visitors center.

Sinking Spring Farm at the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park.

It was quite the surprise to see a miniature version of the Lincoln Memorial in DC.

A Beaux-Arts neo-classical Memorial Building was designed by John Russell Pope for the birthplace site. In 1909 the cornerstone was laid by President Theodore Roosevelt and the building was dedicated in 1911 by President William Howard Taft Almost a hundred years after Thomas Lincoln moved from Sinking Spring Farm, a similar log cabin was placed inside the Memorial Building. The Memorial Building features 16 windows, 16 rosettes on the ceiling, and 16 fence poles, representing Lincoln's being the 16th president. The 56 steps leading up to the building entrance represent his age at his death.

I expected to see a statue of Lincoln inside!

Imagine our surprise to find a log cabin inside!


The original log cabin that Lincoln was reputed to have been born in was dismantled sometime before 1865. Local tradition held that some of the logs from the cabin were used in construction of a nearby house. New York businessman A.W. Dennett purchased the Lincoln farm in 1894 and used the logs from this house to construct a cabin similar in appearance to the original cabin where Lincoln was born. Soon the cabin was dismantled and re-erected for exhibition in many cities. Eventually the logs for this cabin, along with logs incorrectly reputed to have belonged to Jefferson Davis' birthplace and possibly a third cabin, were purchased by the Lincoln Farm Association (LFA), which believed they had acquired only Lincoln logs. When workers tried to reconstruct the cabin, they discovered the problem. The LFA bought a one-room cabin similar to the one reconstructed by Dennett. When the last rebuilt cabin was placed in the Memorial Building, its size made visitor circulation difficult. The LFA reduced the cabin's size from 16-by-18 feet to 12-by-17 feet.

Today, historians recognize that the former claim that these logs were from Lincoln's birth cabin was essentially inaccurate. In his book It All Started With Columbus, satirical writer Richard Armour stated that Lincoln had been born in three states and also "in two cabins - the original, and the reconstructed."

We made another impulsive stop, along the Bourbon Trail at Maker's Mark. This took us off the interstate and through lovely countryside.

We were too late for the last tour at 3:30 (darn losing that hour from Central to Eastern time zone) but the shop was still open

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John suits up to dip his bottle of bourbon in the wax.

We were in a really nice Hilton in downtown Lexington and it soon started to rain a little. 

Great view from our room.

For dinner we went to Saul Good (love that name) around the corner on this square.