On October 5, 1818, Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks, died of "Milk Sickness" an often terminal illness that occurred when one drank the milk from a cow that had eaten a toxic plant -- white snakeroot.

Lincoln was only nine years old when she died, and he wrote little about her. When he referred to her in later years, he described her as his "Angel Mother," that is, his deceased mother.

The death of Lincoln's mother left young Lincoln and his sister responsible for the great amount of work involved with maintaining a frontier home and farm.

On December 2, 1819, Thomas Lincoln married again to widow Sarah Bush Johnston and returned home with his new wife and her three children, "She proved a good and kind mother to A[braham]." The new Lincoln family continued to farm and the children attended school when they could. Lincoln later recalled that he "went to A.B.C. schools by littles" and 'the agregate of all his schooling did not amount to one year."

Tragedy again befell the Lincoln family on January 20, 1828 when Lincoln's sister Sarah, who had married Arron Grigsby in 1826, died while in childbirth. Lincoln experienced the death of two close family members within ten years of one another on this harsh frontier. It was also in Indiana that "in his tenth year he [Lincoln] was kicked by a horse, and apparently killed for a time." but, after several minutes, Lincoln regained consciousness.

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