Abe Lincoln and his mother

Yesterday was a glorious day; the weather here in Georgia was sunny and warm. We took Jaybird to play at the "castle park". It really took some of us a while to get going on "academics," but, by the end of the day, we settled in and, of all sources, plucked the "L" book from our set of World Book Encyclopedias (purchased last winter at a library sale for $10 for the whole set, including a huge atlas), and I read much of the entry on Abe Lincoln. The entry mentioned that, as a youth, Lincoln rescued a dog from a freezing cold stream, that his ax was his best friend, and that he lost his first mother at an early age due to "milk sickness." Jay was especially intrigued by this. According to the piece, cows who ate of the poisonous snakeroot plant gave, in turn, poisonous milk. Nancy Lincoln died when Abraham was 9. His father would marry again the next year to Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow with three children. Lincoln was probably referring to his stepmother when he said:

God bless my mother; all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her.