Original publish date: February 13, 2020
“In his 10th year he was kicked by a horse, and apparently killed for a time.” The words were Abraham Lincoln’s. He was describing his boyhood in the hills of southern Indiana. Although much has been written about Abraham Lincoln’s life, his time as a Hoosier has been woefully neglected. Lincoln’s family moved to Indiana in 1816, when Lincoln was seven years old. Multiple noteworthy events in Lincoln’s life occurred during his time in Indiana. The most important of these was the death of his mother, Nancy Hanks, who died of “milk sickness” from drinking poisonous cows’ milk on October 5, 1818.
Her death was a tragedy Lincoln never got over, however her death resulted in a “rebirth” of sorts when the young railsplitter’s father Thomas married Sarah Bush Johnston of Kentucky in December 1819. Lincoln’s stepmother moved into the family’s Pigeon Creek cabin, bringing with her three children (two girls and one boy). More importantly Sarah brought with her the attention and educational encouragement that young Abraham Lincoln craved and was lacking from his relationship with his father. Lincoln attended school sporadically in present-day Spencer County during the years 1820-24 where he learned to read and write.
On January 20, 1828, Lincoln’s sister Sarah passed away while delivering a stillborn child and both were buried in the Pigeon Creek Baptist Church Cemetery attached to the church the Lincoln family attended, and in which Abraham worked as a janitor for a short time. Perhaps the most significant theological event in Lincoln’s life occurred while he was a Hoosier. In December of 1828 he and his friend Allen Gentry embarked on a trip to New Orleans down the Mississippi River where Lincoln witnessed a slave auction, after which Lincoln said, “If I ever get a chance to hit that thing (slavery), I’ll hit it hard.” Also during those formative years in Indiana, Lincoln worked as a store clerk and met lawyers like John Pritcher, who he borrowed law books from. On March 1, 1830, the Lincolns packed up and moved to Illinois.
When Lincoln ran for President in 1860, John Locke Scripps, senior editor of the Chicago Press and Tribune, asked the candidate for an autobiography. This third-person account, the longest of his autobiographies, offers fascinating details about his early years told in the folksy, homespun style only Lincoln could relay. In this autobiography Lincoln refers to himself alternatively as ‘A’ or ‘Mr. L.’ It is remarkably brief about certain periods of his life, including his years spent in Indiana “A. now thinks that the aggregate of all his schooling did not amount to one year. He was never in a college or Academy as a student; and never inside of a college or academy building till since he had a law-license. What he has in the way of education, he has picked up.’”
Although historians, beginning with biographer Carl Sandburg, love to weave homespun stories about Lincoln into nearly every written account of the 16th President’s life, Lincoln himself was ashamed of the poverty of those early days spent in the Hoosier state and was uncomfortable talking about his life before Springfield. When Scripps interviewed him in 1860, Lincoln explained “Why Scripps, it is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life. It can all be condensed into a single sentence and that sentence you will find in Gray’s Elegy; ‘The short and simple annals of the poor.’ That’s my life, and that’s all you or anyone else can make of it.’”
But what about Lincoln’s statement that he was, “apparently killed for a time”? Well, as you might expect, there is more to the story. Like many a Hoosier farm boy in 1818 frontier Indiana, Lincoln the boy was assigned certain chores perhaps better suited for a man. One of those chores was to deliver corn to Gordon’s gristmill located about two miles from the Lincoln cabin. Abraham rode one of Thomas’ horses to the mill with the sack of corn for grinding stowed safely behind the saddle. Upon his arrival the young railsplitter found a considerable line of others waiting their turn at the wheel. Gordon’s gristmill utilized a horse engine as the power source, but the mill could also be powered by dogs, donkeys, oxen or humans. Watching the horses slowly go round and round, young Lincoln remarked that “my dog could eat the meal as fast as the mill could grind it.”
Eventually it was Abraham’s turn to hitch his old mare to the gristmill’s arm. As he tediously walked his horse round and round, he grew impatient at having wasted most of the morning already. He began to apply a hickory switch to the beast’s behind while shouting, “Git up, you old hussy; git up, you old hussy” to keep his horse moving at an accelerated pace. This tactic worked for a short time until the horse had had enough and, just as his young master clucked out the words “Git up”, the horse kicked backwards and hit the boy in the head with a rear hoof. Lincoln was knocked off his feet and into the air, landing some distance away where he came to rest bruised and bloodied. Noah Gordon rushed to the aid of the unconscious young man. Realizing the seriousness of the situation, Gordon picked the boy up and brought him in to his house, placing him on a nearby bed.
Meanwhile, Dave Turnham, who had come to the mill with Abraham, ran the two miles to get Abraham’s father. Thomas Lincoln rushed to his wagon and lit out to the scene. The elder Lincoln, seeing his son’s grave condition, hauled the injured boy home and put him to bed where the young man remained prone and unconscious all night. Neighbors from the small, close knit community, including mill owner Noah Gordon, gathered at the Lincoln cabin believing Thomas Lincoln’s boy was close to death. The next morning one witness jumped from their seat, pointed and shouted, “Look he’s coming straight back from the dead!” Abraham was shaking and jerking from head to toe when he opened his eyes and finished his cadence from the day before by shouting “You old hussy”.
After the family relocated to Illinois, settling in Macon County, 10 miles west of Decatur, Abraham became increasingly distant from Thomas and those low days in Indiana. In 1831, as Thomas established a new homestead in Coles County, Illinois, Abraham left home for New Salem, where he lived for six years. Leaving his “Angel Mother”, his only sister, his only niece or nephew, and that ornery mule far behind him. But, according to most historians, that angry mule kick stayed with him for the rest of his life.
Edward J. Kempf, an accomplished neurologist and psychiatrist, theorized in his 1965 book, “Abraham Lincoln’s Philosophy of Common Sense”, that the incident caused cerebral damage and contributed to the “melancholy” Lincoln felt throughout his life. The book featured numerous “psychobiographies” of many great figures, including Lincoln. Kempf’s study brought unusual expertise to the subject and is among the best works of its genre. Kempf’s hypothesis was based on what generations of artists, sculptors and photographers already knew; that Abraham Lincoln’s face had a good side and a bad side.
Lincoln’s contemporaries noticed that at times his left eye drifted upward independently of his right eye, a condition doctors diagnosed as “strabismus” but more derisively known as “Lazy Eye”. The resulting affliction results in the eyes failure to properly align with each other when looking straight ahead, particularly when trying to focus on an object. As proof, experts point to the best surviving evidence; two life masks of Lincoln. One a beardless portrait made in April of 1860 and the other, a bearded image made in February of 1865. Laser scans of both masks reveal an unusual degree of facial asymmetry. In short, the left side of Lincoln’s face was much smaller than the right, resulting in the double diagnosis of “hemifacial microsomia” compounded by “strabismus”. The defects join a long list of posthumously diagnosed ailments including smallpox, heart disease, bi-polar disorder and depression that doctors claimed afflicted Lincoln.
Lincoln’s case can be identified by the bony ridge over his deep-set left eye, which was rounder and thinner than the right side. In life, Lincoln’s appearance was mocked by friend and foe alike. In 1862, author Nathaniel Hawthorne, a Lincoln admirer, noted the president’s “homely sagacity” and his “sallow, queer, sagacious visage.” A description considered so disrespectful and inflammatory that it was deleted by Hawthorne’s Atlantic Monthly magazine editor. The strongest evidence for the “case of Lincoln’s lopsided face” can be found in the iconic November 1863 Alexander Gardner photograph taken shortly before the Gettysburg Address.
According to a cadre of modern day medical historians, Gardner’s photo is worth a thousand words. Although modern neurologists admit that a positive diagnosis would require a complete examination of the living Lincoln, photographic evidence strongly supports their theory. The mule kick to the forehead undoubtedly fractured the skull at the point of impact, the size and depth of the depression attesting to the incident’s severity. In addition, the nerves behind the left eye were damaged by the violent snapping of the head and neck backward. That whiplash also caused several small hemorrhages in the brainstem resulting in the permanent ocular and facial effects and was likely responsible for Lincoln’s high pitched, rasping voice.
Other symptoms included Lincoln’s tendency to lapse into a lower conscious state of mental detachment, occasional bouts of sadness and melancholy, accentuated by a near constant gloomy facial expression. These symptoms were described by contemporaries and friends as “ugly and stupid looking”, “dull,” “sad and abstract,” “detached” and “withdrawn.” In those rare moments of joy, humor and happiness, Lincoln’s facial expression turned on a dime from dull indifference to animated interest and boisterous laughter, which doctors point to as a further sign of brain injury.
Yet another after effect of that boyhood mulekick was noticed by Josiah Crawford, a neighbor from Gentryville, Ind. who employed the boy Lincoln, loaned him books for study. Gentry liked to playfully needle the young railsplitter about the way he “stuck out” his lower lip while in deep concentration. When 35-year-old Lincoln returned to to make a speech in southern Indiana in 1844 for Henry Clay, Crawford noticed Abe’s lower lip still protruded abnormally. When Crawford asked what books he consulted before making the speech, Lincoln replied humorously, “I haven’t any. Sticking out my lip is all I need.”
The study of Lincoln’s alleged malady through photos began when many who knew the martyred President were still alive. In 1914, Dr. S. Mitchell found “evidence of left hyperphoria” and suggested that “the corrugations of his brow and crow’s feet at each corner of the eyes showed that he habitually used auxiliary facial muscles to support the external muscles of the eyes in the work for visual coordination.” In 1932, ophthalmologist Dr. W. H. Crisp observed that “Fullface photographs show an upward deviation of the left eye, great enough to produce a lack of fusion of its images with the right eye. The two eyes did not work together, possibly as a result of a vertical strabismus of the left.” And in 1948, Dr. K. C. Wold suggested that the “diplopia was caused by a decoordination of the external muscles of the left eye which was inherently connected in some way with the other facial asymmetries. No physician of record, in so far as I know, has offered an explanation of the nervous origin and nature of the asymmetrical functioning of the left facial and ocular muscles, although some of the nervous effects of eyestrain have been discussed.”
Perhaps due to that mule kick, Lincoln’s adult years were filled with nervous attacks, characterized by eyestrain and headache with nausea and indigestion, so severe that often he became unable to work and had to lie down with a cold compress over his eyes. He had couches in his law office, at home, and in the White House, for this purpose. Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum unknowingly described the disparity of Lincoln’s face for posterity. Before creating the great marble head of Lincoln in the Capitol rotunda at Washington (and also located at the entrance to the tomb in Springfield) Borglum made meticulous comparative measurements of all known photographs, life paintings and masks of Lincoln before attempting his sculpture.
The Danish-American Borglum later gave careful interpretations of the relative meanings of the right and left sides of his face as indicated by its lines and measurements detailing that he saw greater strength of function on the right side rather than the left. The sculptor determined that the lines around the right eye revealed that it was more active, more dominant, and that Lincoln “naturally thought and planned with the visualized imagery of this eye.” The lines around Lincoln’s mouth on the right side indicated that “he smiled very, very often when his nature took no part in it.”
Borglum also noticed that the tip of Lincoln’s nose pointed slightly to the right and the left eye was “wide open” and out of focus, “indecisive,” “noncommittal and dreamy.” The left side of the face seemed “primitive,” “immature” and “unfinished.” Its weak expression was “sad and undetermined” in contrast to the determined strength of the right side. The left brow was “anxious, ever slightly elevated and concerned.” Written on his face was “humor, pathos, half-smile, half-sadness; half-anger, half-forgiveness, half-determination, half-pause; …. a dual Nature struggling with a dual problem delivering a single result.” Borglum’s description of Lincoln’s face is most noteworthy because he made no attempt to find a medical determination to explain why the left side was characterless, weak and undeveloped and the right side expressed the real personality and state of mind of Lincoln.
One final symptom of that childhood mule kick was noted by many biographers and contemporaries (like Ward Lamon and Noah Brooks) over the years. Mr. Lincoln spoke often of several impressive mystifying episodes he experienced as “double visions” that all had superstitious meanings for him. These dreamstate visions were welcomed by the President, who believed them to be good luck omens foretelling good news. That is all but his last vision that foretold of a death in the White House; the death of the President by an assassin’s bullet. A bullet that came to rest behind Abraham Lincoln’s left eye. The very same eye which that errant mule kick at an Indiana gristmill cast toward the heavens nearly fifty years before.
Mr. Reynolds was born at Bellefontaine, Ohio on June 28, 1858 and grew up in Dayton, Ohio. In Dayton, he worked for his father at the Reynolds & Reynolds Co., manufacturing notebooks and other school supplies. Later he started his own company, manufacturing paper cartons and served for 10 years as a member of the school board of that city. While in Ohio, Mr. Reynolds came to know many American leaders, including President McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and Ohio politicos Myron T. Herrick, and Mark Hannah. In 1896 he married Miss Jeanette Lytle in Dayton. She died in 1903 and in 1909 he married Mary V. Williams of Richmond, Indiana. The couple relocated to Richmond and during World War I, Reynolds was prominent in organizing Liberty Loan drives for the war effort.
The Reynolds leaflet further reveals,”Father and mother were at Ford’s Theatre the night of the assassination, and although it was late when they returned home, the general excitement of the night had reached our neighborhood. The newsboys shrill cries of “Extra! Extra! President Lincoln Shot” had awakened everybody in the boarding house. I, too, was awake. Young as I was, I realized what dreadful thing had happened, and I lay wide-eyed in my little trundle bed while father and mother related to the others their personal story of the tragedy. Father, accompanied by several of the men guests, went back to the scene and did not return until after the fateful hour of 7:22 the next morning. I remember as clearly as though it were of yesterday, wearing a wide band of black around the sleeve of my bright plaid jacket, and, carried in father’s arms, of passing the somber catafalque in the rotunda of the Capitol, which inclosed (sic) all that was mortal of the beloved Lincoln. A few weeks later I witnessed the Grand Review of the Army – that wonderful spectacle of the returning boys in blue – which took several days in its passing.”
Two decades later, in 1960, the Richmond Palladium-Item newspaper profiled the widow of the former curator, offering new insight. The article is titled: “Local Woman Conducted Tours In House Where Lincoln Died.” It reveals, “Mrs. Reynolds and her husband lived on the second floor of the house at 516 Tenth street, Washington, DC, at the time Mr. Reynolds was curator of the Oldroyd Lincoln Memorial collection. This was from 1928 through 1936. “I never heard anyone ask Mr. Reynolds a question about Mr. Lincoln he could not answer,” Mrs. Reynolds recalls. Her husband acquired the job as curator when he heard Oldroyd wanted to retire… “I have had visitors say to me doesn’t it give you a creepy feeling?” (sleeping in the house where Lincoln died.) Her answer was always “No.” To the reporter, she said, “I never had a creepy feeling. When I thought about it, it was just a feeling of awe and reverence.” Mr. Reynolds described the collection via radio from the Petersen house several times.”
Needless to say, I was pleased with my visit to and pleasantly reminded how invaluable places and people like these are to the preservation and education of history. After the ACHS helped fill in some blanks in my research, I turned my attention to author Bill Frassanito. He is intensely private, yet unassuming and modest in demeanor. Although an author by trade and historian by nature, Mr. Frassanito has the soul of a teacher.
When asked what first drew him to Gettysburg, he explains, “My first trip to Gettysburg was in 1956 when I was nine years old, and I was just awed by all the monuments, cannons and stuff. I started my research when I was a kid and much of the research for Journey in Time was done when I worked it into a Masters thesis (he is a proud Gettysburg College alum). “When you went to Gettysburg College, I was the high school class of ’64, college class of ’68, at that time all the male students had to take either phys ed or ROTC for two years, after that you made the decision whether you continued on to advanced ROTC, then you were a part of the Army and you got paid. From there you are committed to, after graduation, serving for two years as a second lieutenant, then on to grad school.”
Bill’s collecting interests are not solely confined to Gettysburg. “All of my stuff is going to the Adams County Historical Society. It will be called the Frassanito collection. Including all my stuff that goes beyond Gettysburg and Adams County. My interest in military history includes World War I and Franco Prussian war, it’s very expansive.” Mr. Frassanito’s interest in all things military came when he saw the 1956 movie “War and Peace” starring Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda and, he states, “from that time on I’ve been fascinated by Russian history including the Crimean War” (October 1853 to February 1856 in which the Russian Empire lost to an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, Britain and Sardinia).
Bill continued, “I fortunately survived Vietnam and I put it (his book research) all together when I got out of the Army. I tried to get a job in the museum field but the book took off when I signed with one of the top publishers, Charles Scribner’s. It was later picked up for the Book-of-the-Month club. That became the first of seven books on Civil War photography. I spent eight years and eight months on that project.” One of Bill’s most important discoveries was the “Slaughter Pen” near Devil’s Den. Bill’s book included detailed maps. Bill explains, “The whole purpose of the book was to enable people to re-experience standing where the photographer was. One of the questions I often get is why I don’t update the modern photographs. I’ll never do that as I see them as sort of a time capsule in themselves and I want people to know what the battlefield looked like when I spent five years looking for these spots.”
Frassanito notes that the publication of that photo started a search that is still going on 44 years later. There have been two dozen sites that have been suggested as the site of the photograph. “When people make their discoveries it becomes a religious experience. Every one of those sites has major problems. As far as I’m concerned I don’t want to see a faulty location declared the site and have the search end. That’s the biggest mystery for Civil War photography at Gettysburg. And I’m hoping that one day a pristine 1863 version of the original stereoview or negative surfaces.”
“I lived about 2 miles away in kind of a slum area of Saigon, it was a hotel we rented from the Vietnamese called Horn Hall. On the main floor was a narrow lobby, and there were two shifts requiring a duty officer, you had to spend six hours just sitting there. You had a pistol and if anything happened, you were in charge. One of the shifts was midnight to six. On the 16th of December 1970 I was assigned night duty at MACV headquarters so my name was removed from the night duty at Horne Hall. Later, we got a phone call that a bomb had gone off that night at Horne Hall and the Lieutenant on duty was instantly killed. And I realized that had I been sitting there, all of my discoveries would have gone with me. And these classic photos of the 24th Michigan and 1st Minnesota would still be misidentified.”
Our tour guide explains, “The house had been in the Peter Baker family since 1847.” As a youngster, Dean listened to stories under the old tree that is still there near the house. He continues, “This is where the original guides used to gather under the tree and smoke cigars and drink a little whiskey. The Baker boys were bachelors and always had time to tell stories.” Dean has an encyclopedic knowledge of the battle, but also has personal stories told to him by the legendary figures of this battlefield town. As a youngster, Dean recalls visits by “Pappy Rosensteel who had a huge collection of battlefield relics that he took me to on many occasions.” George D. Rosensteel (1884-1971) had a fantastic lifetime collection of battle relics and displays, including the interpretive Battle of Gettysburg map, acquired by the National Park Service for use in the Gettysburg National Military Park museum and visitor center from 1974-2008. “But they didn’t get it all,” Dean says, “They didn’t get it all.”
We are standing at the base of Wolf Hill near Rock Creek on the far right of the Union Army infantry line; the sounds of traffic whizzing by us on the Baltimore Pike, but it feels like we have traveled back in time. Dean leads us up the slope, we walk about a football field’s length away as he stops in some shady spot, relights his pipe, and explains about cattle grazing in the woods or points out where soldiers were once temporarily buried. This amazing octogenarian halts often, not for his sake but for ours. He climbs these slopes with the agility of a man half his age. He is not winded, but we are.
As we reach the entrance to Lost Avenue, Dean explains with a sweep of his hand, “This was an orchard at the time of the battle, the bodies of many soldiers were buried in rows right over there.” Former resident Cora Baker’s (1890-1977) grandmother told how, after the battle as the bodies were picked up for reburial, “the grass just quivered with lice and bugs where they laid and when the soldiers would roll up their bedrolls in the morning, the grass was alive with lice and bugs from the bodies of the living soldiers as well.”
Upon entering Lost Avenue, Dean explains that General Neill was sent here to guard the rear flank of the Union Army and, most importantly, to protect the Baltimore Pike. Dean states, “When I was a boy I used to visit Lost Avenue with Arthur Baker (1893-1970), who as a lad had walked the fields with the old soldiers that visited the property and actually fought over this ground. Arthur would go and grab a bayonet, left here after the battle, from one of the farm buildings. He’d attach it to his walking stick, hide behind the stone wall and charge out screaming the Rebel Yell.”
Dean maintains the avenue. “The park service never comes out here. Most of the guides have never been out here. The only one I’ve ever seen up here was Barb Adams.” Lost Avenue is the last section of the battlefield that looks exactly as it did when the soldiers fought, and died, here. Dean further explains, “Monuments were set on grass lined strips with no thought of ever paving them. The roads you know now were paved much later. Lost Avenue is the last “pristine section” of unpaved roadway. The 40 foot wide strip is lined by the original stone fence that the 2nd Virginians & 1st North Carolinians fought behind. It was made of field stones picked up by farmers over the years and predates the battle. The second stone wall, the 1895 section, was built later after Sickles took over.”
As springtime returned to the Kentucky hills, the Collins family melted back into their rocky, hillside farm; no richer from the limelight. After the crowds departed, locals saw old man Lee scouring the rescue site for glass bottles to return for deposit. Two years later, in 1927, a struggling Lee Collins sold Crystal Cave to a dentist named Dr. Harry B. Thomas. The sale included White Crystal cave and the burial site of Floyd Collins. Lee’s $10,000 deal with Dr. Thomas included a morbid clause: that his son’s body could be exhumed and displayed in a glass-covered coffin inside the cavern. The enterprising country doctor quickly dug the dead man up and placed Floyd’s encased body on display in Crystal Cave. The gimmick worked and, much to the horror of Floyd’s friends and the Collins family, tourists flocked to Crystal Cave to view the embalmed body of the man now known as the “Greatest Cave Explorer Ever Known.”
Sometime in the wee hours of March 18-19, 1929, Floyd’s body was stolen. The grave robbers “rescued” Collins’s corpse with the intentions of chucking him into the Green River, but Floyd’s body got tangled in the heavy underbrush and Dr. Thomas recovered the remains from a nearby field, minus his injured left leg. The remains were re-interned in a chained casket and placed in a secluded portion of Crystal Cave dubbed the “Grand Canyon”. A half-a-year later, the Great Depression blanketed the country and Floyd Collins’ saga was now a forgotten footnote. Times in Cave City got tough. Tourism plummeted-the same limelight that drew tourists innumerable to the Kentucky cave region now caused visitors to avoid it. As tourism dollars dried up, the sleazy tricks of local cave owners intensified. That feeling pervades Cave City today.
However, Paula’s younger sister Gail, (a Harvard graduate and architect who lives in Oakland, CA) caught the Collins’ family fever and is a caver. Paula explains, “she got the spelunking gene – she and her husband belonged to a Spelunking Club when she was in her 20s.” Gail states, “Floyd Collins was in a forbidden “sandstone” cave which is the most fragile of rocks. I only went into Limestone caves which are more stable. The biggest concern about spelunking in Indiana & Kentucky is flash flooding. We only did caving during the dry months and mostly winter, when the ground is frozen for 5-8 weeks at a time. I spent New Yea’s Eve in a cave with Chuck (her husband) and our Spelunking group one year. One of my last spelunking adventures I was pulled out of a very wet cave entry, by a caving buddy, 6’6″, 250 lb former Marine, because the makeshift tree trunk ladder was missing two rungs. He reached into the hole and used one arm to hoist me out. A harrowing adventure indeed.” Seems that Gail narrowly escaped the fate of her long lost cousin Floyd.
Alan E. Hunter 