COMMISSIONER’S SALE! OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BIRTHPLACE.
COMMISSIONER’S SALE! OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BIRTHPLACE.
BROADSIDE ANNOUNCING A BANKRUPTCY SALE OF LINCOLN’S BIRTHPLACE
Single sheet, 10 x 20 ½ inches, sale date of August 28, 1905, blank on the reverse, vg cond.
This rare historic document broadside was issued by the LaRue Circuit in August 1905. It authorized the public sale of the Sinking Spring property, where Lincoln was born in 1809, to settle a court judgment. It is signed in type by L.B. Handley, Special Commissioner of the LaRue Circuit Court. Among the bidders for the 110 acre Lincoln ancestral farm and birthplace were Mark Twain, William Jennings Bryan and Samuel Gompers. However, the winning bid for the 110 acre farm and home of $3,600 was by Richard Lloyd Jones, the managing editor of Collier’s Weekly on behalf of Robert Collier, publisher of Collier’s Weekly who subsequently helped form the Lincoln Farm Association to preserve the site.
Because of boundary disputes, in 1811, Lincoln's father, Thomas, moved the family from the cabin where Abraham had been born to the Knob Creek farm. Lincoln was two years old at the time, and they lived there until 1816, when he was almost eight. At Knob Creek, the Lincolns farmed 30 acres of a 228 acre tract.
In 1816, the Lincoln’s left Kentucky and moved to Spencer County, Indiana, where they lived until 1830. Then, the family settled near Decatur, Illinois. The following year Abraham struck out on this own and settled in New Salem, Illinois, where he first ran for public office. Lincoln's legacy, however, began in Kentucky.
Source – Kentucky Historical Society