The Lincoln Farm Association: Saving Abraham Lincoln's Birthplace, 1906

When Abraham Lincoln's family farm, the Sinking Spring Farm in Kentucky, went up for auction in 1905, newspapers expected a celebration. The leading idea was to keep the land as a park for a country still scarred by the Civil War — families had been torn apart, and the nation was trying to heal. Supporters imagined it held by the American people "as a garden spot in the nation's history, a trysting place whence North and South, East and West may find the inspiration of national unity."

Few buyers could raise the money, though, and the farm had been abandoned: overgrown, its fences falling down. In the end it was secured by Richard Lloyd Jones, a longtime journalist at Collier's Weekly, who featured the birthplace in the magazine to publicize plans to restore and protect it.

Corn, potatoes and tobacco were grown on the Sinking Spring Farm while the Lincoln Farm Association owned it. Image from the National Park Service's page.

The association

The Lincoln Farm Association was incorporated on April 18, 1906, "for the purposes of honoring and perpetuating the memory of Abraham Lincoln, the taking and holding of 110 acres of his birthplace farm, and the development and maintenance of the same."

It raised money widely: anyone who gave between 25 cents and 25 dollars received an engraved membership certificate, processed at the association's New York City headquarters. Its Board of Directors included Samuel L. Clemens — Mark Twain — and Ida Tarbell, its only woman patron.

Processing membership certificates at the Lincoln Farm Association's headquarters in New York City. Image from the National Park Service's page.

The cabin and the memorial

The search for Lincoln's birth cabin followed. In June 1906 its logs were found and shipped to Louisville, Kentucky. The farm was surveyed, and the architect John Russell Pope was hired to design a memorial building. His first design was far too large and he was sent back to the drawing board, but the memorial was finished and presented to a crowd of more than 3,000 people.

The grounds the association preserved became Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park, which now draws more than 250,000 visitors a year from every state and many countries.

Sources

• National Park Service, Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park: "April 18, 1906 – The Lincoln Farm Association."