Grave Site

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• When  Nancy  Hanks  Lincoln  died  in  1818,  Thomas  buried  her  on  a  wooded  hill,  just  south  of  the  family  farm.    Presumably  some  sort  of  marker  was  placed  on  the  site  at  that  time  and  maintained  by  the  family  during  their  residence  here.    But  following  the  departure  of  the  Lincolns  for  Illinois  in  1830,  the  location  of  Nancy  Hanks  Lincoln’s  grave  was  virtually  forgotten.    But  following  Abraham  Lincoln’s  death  in  1865,  interest  in  his  Indiana  home  was  revived.  In  1868,  a  Civil  War  veteran  named  William  Q.  Corbin  visited  the  boyhood  home  of  his  former  commander-in-chief.    Corbin  was  dismayed  by  the  unkempt  appearance  of  Nancy  Hanks  Lincoln’s  gravesite  and  wrote  a  poem  on  the  subject.    His  poem,  published  in  November  1868,  was  among  the  first  known  public  accounts  of  the  grave’s  condition.
  
  In  response  to  Corbin’s  poem,  there  was  discussion  of  putting  up  a  suitable  marker  but  nothing  materialized  until  1874,  when  a  businessman  by  the  name  of  Joseph  D.  Armstrong  erected  a  two-foot  tall  marker  with  Nancy  Hanks  Lincoln’s  name  inscribed  on  it  at  the  site.    By  1879,  though,  this  marker  had  disappeared  and  the  site  was  again  overgrown  with  vegetation  and  almost  inaccessible.    A  newspaper  article  reporting  the  neglect  prompted  Peter  E.  Studebaker,  second  vice-president  of  the  Studebaker  Carriage  Company,  to  donate  $50.00  for  a  marker.    It  is  this  marker  that  you  see  at  the  gravesite  today.
  

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