Cercado sisters biography of abraham lincoln
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Sarah, all of eleven years old, now had to help care for her younger brother, eighteen-year-old orphaned cousin, and her father.
When Thomas, Sarah and Abraham’s mother, remarried to Sarah Bush Lincoln, the two Sarah’s were able to share the household chores. Eleven-year-old Sarah Lincoln took on the education of her younger brother and future president, Abraham, following the death of their mother, Nancy Hawks Lincoln, after she drank milk from a cow thought to have eaten the poisonous snakeroot plant.
Throughout the rest of her teenage years, Sarah was able to infrequently attend several schools, continuing on her education to a degree.
In 1826, Sarah married Aaron Grigsby. When her mother died in 1818, Sarah had to help prepare her body for burial. Sarah lived in Hardin County, Kentucky until 1816, when Thomas Lincoln moved the family to Spencer County, Indiana, establishing a homestead at Little Pigeon Creek.
Nine months after the wedding, Sarah announced she was pregnant.
Sarah died in childbirth, trying to bring her first child into the world. After the death of her mother in 1818, Sarah assumed the household responsibilities of cooking, cleaning, washing, cleaning clothes, and spinning wool. Abraham blamed her death on the negligence of the Grigsby family in sending for a doctor.
Gravestone, Pigeon Creek Baptist Church Cemetery, Dale, IN; David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 22, 26, 34; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:4, 44, 45-46.
However, her citizenship in the form of helping family left a significant legacy.
Grigsby, Sarah L.
Born: 1807-02-10 Elizabethtown, Kentucky
Died: 1828-01-20 Spencer County, Indiana
Alternate name: Lincoln
Sarah L. Grigsby was the eldest child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln and older sister of Abraham Lincoln.
At the age of twenty, she died in childbirth. The baby passed away as well.
Sarah is buried with her baby in her arms.
Both Sarah and Nancy’s deaths were just the beginning of the numerous family members Abraham would have to bury in his life.
Badges Earned:
Find a Grave Marked
Located In My Personal Library:
Affairs of State: The Untold History of Presidential Love, Sex, and Scandal (1789-1900) by Robert Watson
Sources:
https://www.nps.gov/libo/learn/historyculture/sarah-lincoln-grigsby.htm
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Lincoln-544
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/9270712/sarah-grigsby
Citizenship can build ladders destined to be scaled by giants of history, and an act of citizenship can be as simple as helping a sibling with school.
Both Sarah and Abraham would attend a basic ABC school, and from her mother Sarah learned to make soap, cook over an open fire, and spin wool. The passing of Nancy Hawks Lincoln in 1818 came when Abraham was a tender 9 years old and just two years after the family had moved from Kentucky to the infantile state of Indiana.
The area where the family settled, Little Pigeon Creek Community, east of Evansville and a day’s walk from the Ohio River, is now Lincoln State Park.
When Nancy died, Sarah was suddenly placed in charge of taking care of the household.
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626: Sarah Lincoln Grigsby
Abraham Lincoln’s Elder Sister
Born: 10 February 1807, Elizabethtown, Kentucky, United States of America
Died: 20 January 1828, Dale, Indiana, United States of America
Sarah’s mother was Nancy Lincoln.
It is where the future emancipator absorbed the integrity and values of citizenship that would serve him later as a lawmaker in the Illinois Legislature and in Congress.
Sarah’s dedication to teaching her brother to read enabled him to gain a law degree and accelerate his ascent in politics. In the summer of 1826, Sarah married Aaron Grigsby and moved away from the Lincoln home.
Eventually he would abolish slavery in the United States and hold together a nation that would rise to become perhaps the greatest the world has seen.
Dying during childbirth at age 30, Sarah Lincoln Grigsby did not live to see all that her brother would contribute to the emerging nation.