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

128 ABRAHAM LINCOLN QUARTERLY
built two log houses during the time they lived there. He
also stated that a house which had stood on the property
when they took it over was torn down and the logs used for
firewood.'
It is not necessary for us to rely entirely on the statement
of the elderly Jacob Brother as to the fact that the original
cabin disappeared before Lincoln became a national figure.
We also have the written account of John B. Rowbotham, an
artist, a keen observer and a good investigator, who went to
the site in the spring of 1865 and reported the birthplace
cabin gone.
Rowbotham had been sent by a Cincinnati publishing
house to make a picture of the birthplace cabin. He interviewed a nearby neighbor who was unable to do more than
point out some rocks marking a chimney site. Fortunately,
Rowbotham wrote an account of his investigation of the
Kentucky home sites of the Lincolns in a long letter to
William H. Herndon on June 24, 1865. This letter, together
with Rowbotham's drawing of the cabin site appearing in
Joseph H. Barrett's Life of Abraham Lincoln, presumably
resolves any question as to the existence of a Lincoln birthplace cabin in 1865. Artist Rowbotham wrote, in part, as
follows:.... From E. T. [Elizabethtown] proceed to Hodgenville which
is about ten miles south east of there-8e inquire the way to Rock
Spring farm owned by Mr. R. A. Creal better known as "old
Dickey Creal [.]" The farm is about 3 miles south east of Hodgenville & a good straight road. The site of Mr. L's birthplace is on
this farm about five hundred yards from Mr. Creals house. It is
situated on a little Knoll or rising ground &8 is now a barley field.
Some rocks indicating the site of the chimney are still there. At
the edge of the field are two old pear trees planted by Thomas
SJ. T. Hobson, Footprints of Abraham Lincoln (1909), pp. 14-15. The county
records show that Henry Brother, the father of Jacob, owned the farm from 1835
to his death in 1840. Equity Box 19, Larue County Circuit Court, Hodgenville,
Kentucky.