Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 (coincidentally on 
the same day as Charles Darwin), in a one-room log cabin on a 
farm in Hardin County, Kentucky (now in LaRue Co., in Nolin 
Creek, three miles (5 km) south of the town of Hodgenville), to 
Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks. Lincoln was named after his 
deceased grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, who was killed by Native 
Americans. Lincoln's parents were largely uneducated. When Abraham 
Lincoln was seven years old, he and his parents moved to Spencer 
County, Indiana, "partly on account of slavery" and partly 
because of economic difficulty in Kentucky. In 1830, after 
economic and land-title difficulties in Indiana, the family 
settled on government land along the Sangamon River on a site 
selected by Lincoln's father in Macon County, Illinois, near 
the present city of Decatur. The following winter was especially 
brutal, and the family nearly moved back to Indiana. When his 
father relocated the family to a nearby site the following year, 
the 22-year-old Lincoln struck out on his own, canoeing down the 
Sangamon to homestead on his own in Sangamon County, Illinois 
(now in Menard County), in the village of New Salem. Later 
that year, hired by New Salem businessman Denton Offutt and 
accompanied by friends, he took goods from New Salem to New 
Orleans via flatboat on the Sangamon, Illinois and Mississippi 
rivers. While in New Orleans he may have witnessed a slave 
auction that left an indelible impression on him for the rest 
of his life.

Lincoln began his political career in 1832 with a campaign for 
the Illinois General Assembly. The centerpiece of his platform 
was the undertaking of navigational improvements on the 
Sangamon in the hopes of attracting steamboat traffic to the 
river, which would allow sparsely populated, poor areas along 
and near the river to grow and prosper. He served as a captain 
in a company of the Illinois militia drawn from New Salem 
during the Black Hawk War, writing after being elected by his 
peers that he had not had "any such success in life which gave 
him so much satisfaction."

He later tried his hand at several business and political 
ventures, and failed at them. Finally, after coming across the 
second volume of Sir William Blackstone's four-volume 
Commentaries on the Laws of England, he taught himself the law, 
and was admitted to the Illinois Bar in 1837. That same year, he 
moved to Springfield, Illinois and began to practice law with 
Stephen T. Logan. Later, he partnered with Willam H. Herndon. 
He became one of the most highly respected and successful 
lawyers in the state of Illinois, and became steadily more 
prosperous. Lincoln served four successive terms in the Illinois 
House of Representatives, as a representative from Sangamon 
County, beginning in 1834. In 1837 he made his first protest 
against slavery in the Illinois House, stating that the 
institution was "founded on both injustice and bad policy." 

In 1841, Lincoln entered law practice with William Herndon, a 
fellow member of the Whig Party. In 1856, both men joined the 
fledgling Republican Party. Following Lincoln's assassination, 
Herndon began collecting stories about Lincoln from those who 
knew him in central Illinois, eventually publishing a book, 
Herndon's Lincoln.

On November 4, 1842, Lincoln married Mary Todd. President 
Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln had four sons.

Robert Todd Lincoln : b. August 1, 1843 in Springfield, 
Illinois - d. July 26, 1926 in Manchester, Vermont. 
Edward Baker Lincoln : b. March 10, 1846 in Springfield, Illinois 
- d. February 1, 1850 in Springfield, Illinois. (Named after a 
close friend of Lincoln's, Congressman Edward D. Baker.) 
William Wallace Lincoln : b. December 21, 1850 in Springfield, 
Illinois - d. February 20, 1862 in Washington, D.C. 
Thomas "Tad" Lincoln : b. April 4, 1853 in Springfield, 
Illinois - d. July 16, 1871 in Chicago, Illinois. 
Only Robert survived into adulthood. Of Robert's children, only 
Jessie Lincoln had any children (2 - Mary Lincoln Beckwith and 
Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith). Neither Robert Beckwith nor Mary 
Beckwith had any children, so Abraham Lincoln's bloodline ended 
when Robert Beckwith (Lincoln's great-grandson) died on 
December 24, 1985.