Lincoln scholar to speak Saturday

Aug. 16—GREENSBURG — Evansville attorney and Abraham Lincoln scholar Joshua Claybourn will present a program at 1 p.m. Saturday, August 20, at the Greensburg/Decatur County Public Library, 1110 E. Main Street.

Regarded as the foremost living scholar on President Lincoln's youth in Indiana, he is editor of Abraham Lincoln Wilderness Years and a co-editor of Abe's Youth: Shaping the Future President.

Claybourn appeared as an expert in the six-part CNN documentary Lincoln: Divided We Stand. He is a board member of both the Abraham Lincoln Association and Abraham Lincoln Institute, former chair of the Southern Indiana Civil War Roundtable, and former trustee and president of the Evansville Vanderburgh County Public Library.

He serves as first commander of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War John W. Foster Camp No. 2.

Claybourn frequently hosts "Lincoln Log," a podcast featuring conversations with leading historians and other officials about their stories, research and wisdom.

Claybourn is also editor of Our American Story: The Search for a Shared National Narrative, a collection of essays by theorists, historians, and politicians addressing the possibility of a shared narrative within a country divided by political polarization.

Claybourn's work has appeared in USA Today, The Hill, The Federalist, The American Spectator, National Review Online, American Thinker, and World magazine, as well as regional publications such as the Indianapolis Star, Evansville Courier & Press, The News-Sentinel, and The Herald-Times. On television, he has commented on current events on CNN, MSNBC, and NHK.

Lincoln's younger years

According to Wikipedia, Lincoln's family moved from Kentucky to Hurricane Township, Perry County, Indiana.

Lincoln spent his formative years, from the age of 7 to 21, on the family farm in the Little Pigeon Creek community of Spencer County, in Southwestern Indiana.

As was common on the frontier, Lincoln received a meager formal education, the aggregate of which may have been less than twelve months. However, Lincoln continued to learn on his own from life experiences and through reading and reciting what he had read or heard from others.

In October 1818, two years after their arrival in Indiana, 9-year-old Lincoln lost his birth mother, Nancy, who died after a brief illness known as milk sickness.

Thomas Lincoln returned to Elizabethtown, Kentucky late the following year and married Sarah Bush Johnston on December 2, 1819. Lincoln's new stepmother and her three children joined the Lincoln family in Indiana in late 1819.

A second tragedy befell the family in January 1828 when Sarah Lincoln Grigsby, Abraham's sister, died in childbirth.

In March 1830, 21-year-old Lincoln joined his extended family in a move to Illinois. After helping his father establish a farm in Macon County, Illinois, Lincoln set out on his own in the spring of 1831. Lincoln settled in the village of New Salem where he worked as a boatman, store clerk, surveyor, and militia soldier during the Black Hawk War, and became a lawyer in Illinois. He was elected to the Illinois Legislature in 1834, and was reelected in 1836, 1838, 1840 and 1844.

In November 1842, Lincoln married Mary Todd; the couple had four sons. In addition to his law career, Lincoln continued his involvement in politics, serving in the United States House of Representatives from Illinois in 1846. He was elected president of the United States on November 6, 1860.

Claybourn's presentation is part of the continuing celebration of Greensburg's bicentennial and represents just one of the many scholars speaking in Greensburg as part of the Cleo Duncan Lecture Series.

Attendance is free.

At 7 p.m. Tuesday, September 17, William O. Smith will speak at the library on the Underground Railroad in Decatur County, and at 11 a.m. Saturday, September 24, local scholar Phillip Jackson will be speaking on Greensburg native J.T. Wilder and his patent on the hydraulic turbine.

Contact Bill Rethlake at 812-651-0876 or email bill.rethlake@greensburgdailynews.com