Does Ky. boyhood count for much?

BICENTENNIAL BRAGGING RIGHTS: 3 STATES CLAIM PRESIDENT AS THEIR OWN

By Greg Kocher - GKOCHER1@HERALD-LEADER.COM

His birth and earliest schooling were in Kentucky. His adolescence and young-adult years were in Indiana. And his legal career and political aspirations were realized in Illinois.

So which of the three states has the strongest claim to Abraham Lincoln, the beloved U.S. president whose 1809 birth will be marked with two years of bicentennial events starting Feb. 11 and 12 in Louisville and Hodgenville?

"Every one of these three places has a different and equally valid claim in terms of where he hailed from," said James M. McPherson, author of 1988's Battle Cry of Freedom, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Civil War.

"Kentucky can claim his birthplace, and so that gives them certain bragging rights," McPherson said. "And I suppose Indiana would make the point that his formative years were spent there and that's where he got most of what little education he got. But then Illinois would say, 'Well, this is where he spent most of his adult life and this is where he achieved prominence.'"

The question was one of many that trailed students from Centre College in Danville who spent three days on a kind of cross-state Lincoln quest last month. The group visited the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site near Hodgenville, and then traveled to various Lincoln-related sites in Springfield, Ill.

In Kentucky, they climbed the 56 steps (one for each year of Lincoln's life) leading up to the birthplace memorial that shelters an 1800s cabin symbolic of the one-door, dirt-floor house where Lincoln was born on Feb. 12, 1809. They stopped at Knob Creek Farm, about 6 miles northeast of Hodgenville, where Lincoln lived between ages 2 and 7.

In Springfield, Ill., the Centre students walked the creaking floorboards of Lincoln's law office, saw the desk where he wrote his first inaugural address, toured his 10-room house, went through the $115 million presidential library and museum complex, and visited the tomb where he is buried. At the law office, they listened as interpreter Clara Wright talked about fellow Kentuckian and Centre graduate John Todd Stuart, who encouraged Lincoln to study law, lent him law books to read, and became Lincoln's first law partner.

The 15 students also saw how crazy a town goes over a favorite son. A now-defunct downtown Springfield business called El Presidente Burritos featured a window logo with the penny-like profile of Lincoln wearing a tilted sombrero. Visitors who plunk down $5.25 at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum's cafe can snack on an "Honest Abe Turkey Bacon Wrap." (Not to be outdone, Ruthie's Lincoln Freeze in Hodgenville serves a quarter-pound Lincoln Burger for $2.79.)

Lincoln expressed fondness for Springfield when he left there in 1861 for his inauguration in Washington, D.C.

"To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything," Lincoln told Springfield residents at the train depot before departing. And in 1863, Lincoln wrote: "Springfield is my home; there, more than elsewhere, are my life-long friends."

After immersing themselves in all things Lincoln, many in the Centre contingent said Illinois has good reason to proclaim itself the "Land of Lincoln" -- the state slogan since 1955 -- because he spent most of his adult life there.

"Even though I am a native-born Kentuckian, I think I would have to say he was a son of Illinois," said freshman Maria Kennedy. "Illinois was his home and where he has his law practice and where he meets his wife. All the important things about Lincoln -- the reasons why he is famous -- can be traced back to Springfield, not Kentucky."

But fellow Centre freshman Grant Sharp of Russell Springs said he thinks Indiana, where Lincoln lived from ages 7 to 21, contributed more to the man.

"Because that is where his work ethic was really established," Sharp said. "And that work ethic and that moral character that he developed in Indiana made him the man that he became in Illinois, that ultimately made him the national celebrity that he became. He became a self-made man in Indiana."