Abraham Lincoln quarterly. [Vol. 5, no. 3]

134 ABRAHAM LINCOLN QUARTERLY
1894, for $3,000 on three installment notes due in the customary periods of six, twelve, and eighteen months, and thereafter, the place was referred to as "Lincoln Spring Farm."
Three days after buying this farm, Dennett, in an oddly
worded contract, made Bigham his agent and attorneyin-fact to manage it.'0 It is to be remembered that Dennett
was, thereafter, away in California or New York practically all
the time and that Bigham was the master of the farm and the
development of this real estate designated in their contract
as the "Lincoln Birthplace."
Dennett had sensed that the historical significance of this
old farm enhanced its value and that it was another possible
source of dollars to pour into his numerous reform movements and serve as a prop to his own shaky finances. Upon
buying the farm, Dennett announced in the Louisville
Courier-Journal, December 1, 1894, that it was a moneymaking venture, that he planned to convert it into a public
park and build a large hotel on the place. Further, he announced that during the national G.A.R. encampment of
1895, he was "arranging to have special trains run down to
Hodgenville." He was convinced that the "old soldiers would
flock down there and he would more than make his money
back during the encampment of 1895."
The Dennett hotel on the Lincoln birthplace farm failed
to materialize. But out of a clear sky, on August 29, 1895, the
Reverend Mr. Bigham announced in the Larue County
Herald that he had received a telegram from Dennett, "instructing him to have built at once a log cabin on the Lincoln
Farm exactly where stood the cabin in which Lincoln was
born, and the cabin is to be built out of the identical logs that
were in the original cabin." Bigham had made the deal with
10 Original copy of this contract, dated November 26, 1894, is in the file of
"A. W. Linforth, Trustee, vs. David Crear, A. W. Dennett and The Christian
and Missionary Alliance," Larue County Circuit Court, Hodgenville, Kentucky.
It was exhibit "A" in the case.