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Published: July 10th 2019
I kid you not. Abe Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln came and told us all about his political campaigns over slavery and the civil war and even read his Gettysburg address.
He was very tall and she was very short. What got me was that her only surviving son had her committed as he thought she was insane. Fortunately she was released after a few months.
Earlier in the day we drove out to his birthplace at Sinking Springs near the town of Hodgenville, Kentucky. A huge Greek revival memorial building was built early in the 20th century with a replica of the small log cabin in which he was born. At first they thought it was the real cabin but analysis of the tree rings in the logs dated it after Lincoln was born. The logs are held together with clay and reinforced with horsehair.
The museum was crowded with artefacts and documents from his life. All very interesting,
It was a very pleasant drive through the gently rolling countryside, fields of corn destined for the Bourbon distillery. Kentucky is of course the Blue Grass state so called because in the early morning in
spring the grass has tiny blue flowers giving the whole plains a blue hue. Before Europeans arrived bison used to roam these plains.
We have learned a lot about Bourbon, how it is distilled and what makes Kentucky Bourbon the best - the clear water filtered through limestone, the quality of the corn and its storage in charred oak barrels.
In the afternoon we walked in the cool of the woods three miles there and back to the Buttermilk Waterfall. A bit exhausted when we returned as the afternoon seemed to get even hotter.
Another famous personality visited last night, Mark Twain. He was a bit old and doddery and reminisced on his life growing up in Hannibal on the Upper Mississippi. Unfortunately we won’t be able to visit there.
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