In good faith in 1906, the Lincoln Farm Association, including Robert Collier of Collier's Weekly, Mark Twain, William Jennings Bryan, Samuel Gompers and others, raised more than $350,000 from 100,000 citizens to build a memorial to house what they thought was Lincoln's birth cabin. President Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone for the memorial in 1909, and President William Howard Taft dedicated the marble and granite building in 1911. Ironically, the supposed birthplace cabin didn't fit, so builders just cut the logs and reconstructed it smaller.
"We'd be in jail for life today if we even thought about doing what they did in 1911," joked the ranger on duty. "But things were different then."
In actuality, logs from the original Lincoln cabin were probably dismantled and used to build a log house. When New York businessman A. W. Dennett bought the Lincoln farm in 1894, he had a cabin put in near Sinking Spring. When admission fees didn't raise enough money, the cabin was dismantled and shipped to Nashville, Buffalo and Coney Island for fairs. No wonder no one admitted it was a fake until about 40 years ago!
In actuality, logs from the original Lincoln cabin were probably dismantled and used to build a log house. When New York businessman A. W. Dennett bought the Lincoln farm in 1894, he had a cabin put in near Sinking Spring. When admission fees didn't raise enough money, the cabin was dismantled and shipped to Nashville, Buffalo and Coney Island for fairs. No wonder no one admitted it was a fake until about 40 years ago!
The ranger chuckled. "We know now that maybe no single log of it is original, but it dramatizes the values that sustained Lincoln as he led the nation through its darkest hours."
We found the site of the old oak tree that provided a property boundary marker, and we walked the Big Sink Trail before the rain set in. Then it poured.
We sat on the porch and read about Lincoln. The pamphlet supplemented the movie. Lincoln's ancestors emigrated from England in 1637 and settled in Massachusetts. Descendants moved on to fertile farmland in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia. His grandfather Abraham reached the edge of the frontier and initially settled in the Shenandoah Valley. But in 1782 Abraham, his wife Bersheba and five children sold the farm and headed through Cumberland Gap for the Kentucky wilderness. While working the newly planted field with the children, he was killed in an Indian raid. Ten-year old Thomas, the father of the future President, stood over the body and was saved from death at the last moment when one of his brothers shot an approaching Indian brave. The family moved to the more secure and populated Washington County, but Thomas roamed up and down Kentucky, honest but uneducated and without driving ambition, serving as county prison guard, militiaman and frontier citizen.
Eventually he settled in Elizabethtown, learned the carpenter's trade, bought a 230-acre farm, married Nancy Hanks and had their first child Sarah. In December of 1808, the Lincoln family purchased Sinking Spring, a farm of 300 stony acres, for $200. They moved the 14 miles southwest into a one-room log cabin built on a knoll near Sinking Spring, the cabin where the future President was born. He was named Abraham after his grandfather.
We sat on the porch and read about Lincoln. The pamphlet supplemented the movie. Lincoln's ancestors emigrated from England in 1637 and settled in Massachusetts. Descendants moved on to fertile farmland in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia. His grandfather Abraham reached the edge of the frontier and initially settled in the Shenandoah Valley. But in 1782 Abraham, his wife Bersheba and five children sold the farm and headed through Cumberland Gap for the Kentucky wilderness. While working the newly planted field with the children, he was killed in an Indian raid. Ten-year old Thomas, the father of the future President, stood over the body and was saved from death at the last moment when one of his brothers shot an approaching Indian brave. The family moved to the more secure and populated Washington County, but Thomas roamed up and down Kentucky, honest but uneducated and without driving ambition, serving as county prison guard, militiaman and frontier citizen.
Eventually he settled in Elizabethtown, learned the carpenter's trade, bought a 230-acre farm, married Nancy Hanks and had their first child Sarah. In December of 1808, the Lincoln family purchased Sinking Spring, a farm of 300 stony acres, for $200. They moved the 14 miles southwest into a one-room log cabin built on a knoll near Sinking Spring, the cabin where the future President was born. He was named Abraham after his grandfather.
"I think it's interesting that property lines were determined by trees," said Andy. "That's why they only stayed at Sinking Spring for two years when the property ownership came into question."
"Maybe that's what drove Abe to be a lawyer," I suggested. "I always thought his family was poverty stricken, but the movie said they were relatively well off, and the pamphlet says they owned two farms, a lot in Elizabethtown and livestock."
"But they lost the farm," said Andy.
After the legal challenge on the Sinking Spring farm in 1811, the Lincolns moved 10 miles northeast to a farm on Knob Creek, 30 acres of leased bottomland where the soil was richer. The cabin and tavern next door, built years later to milk tourists, were both closed, when we pulled in the parking lot, but this cabin had been reconstructed just like the fake original. At the Knob Creek Farm Abraham Lincoln remembered planting pumpkin seeds between corn rows and attending Caleb Hazel's ABC school, where students blabbed all lessons out loud because of the lack of books. Hazel was an outspoken emancipationist, and the Lincolns belonged to an antislavery church. Slavery and ongoing lawsuits over titles to his farms induced Thomas Lincoln to move his family to Indiana in 1816. It was there that the child Abraham, shaped in Kentucky, grew to manhood.
The rain had stopped and the Kentucky skies brightened. It was time to move on.
"There could be a million barrels here aging," said Shauna, our guide as we toured the Jim Beam plant in Clarkson, Kentucky. It was the original distillery of three existing plants with 27 warehouses on site, aging 20,000 to 50,000 barrels per warehouse, with 55 gallons of liquid in each barrel. Shauna walked us through the family home of T. Jeremiah Beam.
In 1788 Jacob Beam had moved his family westward to Kentucky. He raised corn, fruit, hogs and operated a grist mill. He also distilled bourbon whiskey, using the Kentucky limestone water, and perfected his own technique, selling his first barrel in 1795.
Jacob's great grandson James rebuilt the distillery after Prohibition ended in 1933 and called the bourbon Jim Beam.
It is Kentucky's oldest continuing business and could be "the oldest family secret in American industry," according to the pamphlet.
Shauna pointed out the 1800's copper still in the Stillhouse Exhibit before taking us into Warehouse D, oldest rack house where barrels of Jim Beam Black had aged for seven years.
"Corn makes it sweeter," explained Shauna, "but to be bourbon it has to be made in the U.S., and it has to be 50% to 80% corn. The other grains are barley and rye. More rye makes it taste spicier."
Inside Warehouse D the 55-gallon barrels, stacked 14 deep, were piled three barrels high on each floor for nine floors. "The 14 in a row are always the same product," said Shauna, "and the bung or plug for the barrel has to be up, between 9:00 o'clock and 3:00 o'clock, or the yeast fermenting the grain can make it explode as it ages."
All the barrels, as well as the warehouse shelving itself, were made of white oak. Wood doesn't damage the barrels the way metal would. "The rich color of the bourbon comes from the inside of the barrel," said Shauna, "which is burned to charcoal before it is filled. All Jim Beam products are aged in oak, and all age from four to nine years."
As we walked back towards the Visitor Center, Shauna pointed out the blackened trees. "It's from the fermenting process," she said. "Everything in town turns black. That's how officials tell if people are making moonshine in the woods. All the trees turn black
"There could be a million barrels here aging," said Shauna, our guide as we toured the Jim Beam plant in Clarkson, Kentucky. It was the original distillery of three existing plants with 27 warehouses on site, aging 20,000 to 50,000 barrels per warehouse, with 55 gallons of liquid in each barrel. Shauna walked us through the family home of T. Jeremiah Beam.
In 1788 Jacob Beam had moved his family westward to Kentucky. He raised corn, fruit, hogs and operated a grist mill. He also distilled bourbon whiskey, using the Kentucky limestone water, and perfected his own technique, selling his first barrel in 1795.Jacob's great grandson James rebuilt the distillery after Prohibition ended in 1933 and called the bourbon Jim Beam.
It is Kentucky's oldest continuing business and could be "the oldest family secret in American industry," according to the pamphlet.Shauna pointed out the 1800's copper still in the Stillhouse Exhibit before taking us into Warehouse D, oldest rack house where barrels of Jim Beam Black had aged for seven years.
"Corn makes it sweeter," explained Shauna, "but to be bourbon it has to be made in the U.S., and it has to be 50% to 80% corn. The other grains are barley and rye. More rye makes it taste spicier."Inside Warehouse D the 55-gallon barrels, stacked 14 deep, were piled three barrels high on each floor for nine floors. "The 14 in a row are always the same product," said Shauna, "and the bung or plug for the barrel has to be up, between 9:00 o'clock and 3:00 o'clock, or the yeast fermenting the grain can make it explode as it ages."
All the barrels, as well as the warehouse shelving itself, were made of white oak. Wood doesn't damage the barrels the way metal would. "The rich color of the bourbon comes from the inside of the barrel," said Shauna, "which is burned to charcoal before it is filled. All Jim Beam products are aged in oak, and all age from four to nine years."As we walked back towards the Visitor Center, Shauna pointed out the blackened trees. "It's from the fermenting process," she said. "Everything in town turns black. That's how officials tell if people are making moonshine in the woods. All the trees turn black
"Boy, what you can learn while traveling!" I told Andy.
In the bar tasting room we sampled Jim Beam Black, 86 proof, aged four years, and Bakers, 109 proof, aged eight years.
"Can you taste the difference in smoothness?" asked Shauna. "Now try a piece of chocolate and another sip of Bakers. It's a sipping Bourbon for after supper, smooth and warm."
Only our samples were before supper, and we had not eaten lunch. The warmth spread quickly.
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