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February 1999 Featured Story
Traces of Lincoln
Formative years on frontier rendered in Indiana artworks
Much is known and recorded, in words and pictures, of Abraham Lincoln as the Illinois prairie lawyer, orator and politician. Even more is revealed and preserved of Lincoln as the revered president who steered the nation through Civil War and saved the Union, brought to all people of this nation “a new birth of freedom” and died a martyr to these accomplishments.
In comparison, Lincoln’s boyhood days in Indiana are mere tracings, at best. They’re sketched in folklore, myth and the hazy recollections recorded many years later of those who knew him. Lincoln himself spoke little about the hardships, sadness and toil he experienced growing up on the harsh Hoosier frontier.
The years Lincoln spent in Indiana — from ages 7 to 21 — were his formative years, though. From 1816-1830, the wilderness along Little Pigeon Creek and the Ohio River, in what today is Spencer County, is where much of President Lincoln’s character was hewn. “Indiana’s finest contribution to civilization,” is how historian Louis A. Warren described the 16th president in his biography, “Lincoln’s Youth.”
In a cover story three years ago, the Electric Consumer discussed the impact the young free Hoosier state made on the young Lincoln. As a sequel, we present this pictorial survey of how artists and sculptors have attempted to fill in those missing years of Lincoln’s boyhood as a Hoosier.
Abraham Lincoln’s Hoosier heritage is honored at the state government center in Indianapolis. These two works were selected from a competition commemorating his 150th birthday in 1959. Photos by Richard G. Biever
 A detail from a giant mural of Lincoln’s life in Southern Indiana depicts Lincoln at the helm of a flatboat on the Ohio River. The mural was created from 300,000 Venetian glass tiles in 1962 by Garo Z. Antreasian, who was an instructor at the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis.
 Silhouetted against the capitol, is a bronze statue of a 21-year-old Lincoln holding a book. Dedicated in 1963, it was designed by David K. Rubins, also a Herron instructor.
 Lesa McKenzie, of Lexington, Ky., holds the door for her 3-year-old son Kenton at the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial visitor center. Flanking the door are two of five sculptured panels depicting Lincoln’s life that grace the face of the semi-circular center. The left panel depicts Lincoln’s youth in Indiana, 1816-1830. (A close up of the panel is also shown on the cover.) The panel on the right, which is the center panel of the five, represents Lincoln’s legacy and bears the inscription, “Now he belongs to the ages.” The other three panels, not pictured, represent Lincoln’s childhood in Kentucky, 1809-1816; political ascendancy in Illinois, 1830-1861; and presidency, 1861-1865. The panels are the work of E.H. Daniels. The Hoosier sculptor initially started sketching designs at his own expense in 1940 when the memorial, originally an arched cloister connecting two halls, was being planned. The bas-relief panels were completed in 1943.
 Abraham
Lincoln’s 14 formative years on the Indiana frontier, from 1816-1830,
are depicted in the close-up of a bas-relief at the Lincoln Boyhood
National Memorial in Spencer County. Lincoln as a young man is on the
right. The panel, one of five depicting various stages of Lincoln’s
life, was created by E.H. Daniels for the memorial site.
 Lincoln’s days as a flatboat pilot and ferry operator on the Ohio River are rendered in a romantic landscape painting by Clifton Wheeler. Though only about two-thirds of the actual painting is shown here, Lincoln on the river is dwarfed by the grand majesty of the river itself and the wooded bluffs of Southern Indiana. The large painting, dated 1945, is mounted above a stone hearth in the Nancy Hanks Lincoln Memorial Hall at the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial in Spencer County. The site, operated by the National Park Service, includes the Lincoln family’s original homestead where Lincoln spent most of his formative years — from ages 7 to 21. Wheeler (1883-1953), a Mooresville native, was a Hoosier artist of some renown who sketched and painted scenic landscapes across the United States but found many appealing spots in Indiana.
Here’s an Electric Consumer link to complete images of all five Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial relief panels and more information about each.
Here’s a directory to other Lincoln articles appearing in Electric Consumer, publication of Indiana’s electric cooperatives.
Written By: eceditor
Date Posted: 1/25/2008
Number of Views: 779
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