Page "Abraham Lincoln" Paragraph 6

Thomas Lincoln's new wife was the widow Sarah Bush Johnston, the mother of three children.

Lincoln became very close to his stepmother, and referred to her as " Mother ".

As a pre-teen, he did not like the hard labor associated with frontier life.

Some in his family, and in the neighborhood, for a time considered him to be lazy.

As he grew into his teens, he willingly took responsibility for all chores expected of him as one of the boys in the household and became an adept axeman in his work building rail fences.

He attained a reputation for brawn and audacity after a very competitive wrestling match to which he was challenged by the renowned leader of a group of ruffians, " the Clary's Grove boys ".

Lincoln also agreed with the customary obligation of a son to give his father all earnings from work done outside the home until age 21.

In later years, Lincoln occasionally loaned his father money.

Lincoln became increasingly distant from his father, in part because of his father's lack of education.

While young Lincoln's formal elementary education consisted approximately of a year's worth of classes from several itinerant teachers, he was mostly self-educated and was an avid reader.