ANGEL-MOTHER

In many countries, May 8 is ‘Mother’s Day’. Here’s a story about Abraham Lincoln and Sarah.

Abraham was born in 1809 to Thomas Lincoln and his wife Nancy. Thomas had courted Sarah, but she married Daniel Johnston. Thomas was a carpenter, but preferred living in the wilderness and set up house in Pigeon’s Creek, Kentucky.

The region was marshy and inhospitable. Horses and cattle did not thrive and people often died of malaria. Two years after their arrival, Nancy fell ill and died, leaving 10-year-old Abe and his sister motherless. Soon after, Daniel Johnston died too.

Thomas decided to meet Sarah and ask her if she would marry him. He came straight to the point and told her, “I have no wife and you, no husband. If you are willing I’d like to marry you.”

That morning, they got married and in the wagon piled high with her household goods, Sarah set off with her children for her new home. She had her misgivings though. Tom had two children who had not been told about their new mother. Besides, there was Dennis, an orphan, who lived with them. Sarah would have to knit all of them into one loving family.

The home she reached was just a one-roomed cabin. It had a mud floor and hardly any furniture. The children slept in the loft on a pile of leaves. When the wagon arrived Abe had not said a word, but ran his fingers wonderingly over the things Sarah had brought.

She set to work at once. She heated water and gave Abe and his sister a thorough wash. She combed their matted hair with her own comb. In a couple of weeks the place was transformed. Sarah was gentle and worked hard. She made new clothes for the children, holding up her mirror for them to see.

How delighted they were! Best of all, she gave them appetising food. Abe no longer looked wan but was full of fun.

Abe loved going to school, but his father disapproved and wanted him to help him with his work. It was Sarah who stood up for him. He loved writing down what he had read and would read it out to Sarah. It made her happy and proud. She encouraged him.

When Abe was 22, he had the chance to be a clerk in New Salem. He went on to become a lawyer and, to Sarah’s immense joy, was elected President. Before Abe went to Washington, he came by train and carriage to see Sarah. He had brought her a present — beautiful cloth for a dress. Sarah could not bear to put scissors to it but would run her fingers lovingly over it.

Four years later, they came to tell Sarah that he was dead. “Abe was a good boy,” she said. “He loved me truly.”

When Sarah died, she hardly drew attention from historians and biographers. It took people awhile to realise that when Abraham Lincoln said, ‘All that I am, I owe to my angel-mother,’ he was speaking not of his heavenly mother, but of his step-mother Sarah.