About the time the new cabin was ready relatives and friends
followed from Kentucky, and some of these in turn occupied the
half-faced camp. During the autumn a severe and mysterious
sickness broke out in their little settlement, and a number of
people died, among them the mother of young Abraham. There was no
help to be had beyond what the neighbors could give each other.
The nearest doctor lived fully thirty miles away. There was not
even a minister to conduct the funerals. Thomas Lincoln made the
coffins for the dead out of green lumber cut from the forest
trees with a whip-saw, and they were laid to rest in a clearing
in the woods. Months afterward, largely through the efforts of
the sorrowing boy, a preacher who chanced to come that way was
induced to hold a service and preach a sermon over the grave of
Mrs. Lincoln.

Her death was indeed a serious blow to her husband and children.
Abraham's sister, Sarah, was only eleven years old, and the tasks
and cares of the little household were altogether too heavy for
her years and experience. Nevertheless they struggled bravely
through the winter and following summer; then in the autumn of
1819 Thomas Lincoln went back to Kentucky and married Sarah Bush
Johnston, whom he had known, and it is said courted, when she was
only Sally Bush. She had married about the time Lincoln married
Nancy Hanks, and her husband had died, leaving her with three
children. She came of a better station in life than Thomas, and
was a woman with an excellent mind as well as a warm and generous
heart. The household goods that she brought with her to the
Lincoln home filled a four-horse wagon, and not only were her own
children well clothed and cared for, but she was able at once to
provide little Abraham and Sarah with comforts to which they had