Kentucky ready to reclaim Lincoln legacy

The one-room cabin at the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site in LaRue County, Ky. was the first home of America's 16th president.

Friday, August 24, 2007 12:17 PM CDT

By Greg Kocher
McClatchy Newspapers

HODGENVILLE, Ky. -- Larry and Judy Sivley peered into the dirt-floor, one-room log cabin and marveled that such a place was the cradle for the 16th president of the United States.

“All there was room for was the bed, a couple of chairs, maybe,” Judy Sivley said.

The Alabama tourists are among the more than 200,000 people a year who visit the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site in LaRue County, Ky.

Visitation numbers are increasing there and at other Lincoln-related sites as the state and nation prepare to mark the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth with a two-year celebration that begins in 2008 and ends in 2010.

The state commemoration will include the raising of new statues and memorials, music and theater presentations about Lincoln, new museum exhibits and children’s programs.

The national bicentennial kickoff will be at the birthplace on Feb. 12, 2008. Planners say President Bush probably will attend, although the White House has given no confirmation.

The bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth won’t be until Feb. 12, 2009, but planners wanted to begin with an extended lead-in, said LaRue County Judge-Executive Tommy Turner, a member of the national Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and co-chairman of the Kentucky Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

Kentucky could host 1 million visitors to the birthplace and other Lincoln-related sites during the two-year celebration. Planners see the bicentennial as a chance to better tell the role that Kentucky played in the life and career of Lincoln.

“Illinois has long been ‘The land of Lincoln’ in their claim and we have never made that claim ourselves,” Turner said. “Now it’s time for us to make the claim that, yes, we are the Land of Lincoln, too,” Turner said. “What Lincoln was, what he became, is due in large part to where he’s from and his early years and the experiences that he had.”

Lincoln’s family moved from Kentucky to Indiana in 1816 when he was 7 years old. When he was 21, he left Indiana for Illinois, where he became a lawyer, state legislator and member of the U.S. House of Representatives. But Lincoln’s connections to Kentucky go beyond the state as his birthplace, said Stuart Sanders, community services administrator for the Kentucky Historical Society.

For example, Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd, was from Lexington, Ky. His law partners in Illinois were Kentuckians. And John C. Breckinridge, a former vice president who is buried in Lexington Cemetery, was one of Lincoln’s rivals in the four-candidate presidential election of 1860.

“The influences that Kentucky had throughout his life were exceedingly great,” Sanders said.

Bicentennial planners also want to strengthen the long-term legacy of Kentucky’s Lincoln sites and museums.

Hodgenville is a major beneficiary of that goal, as workers complete a $3.5 million reconstruction of the town’s public square to accommodate the anticipated increase in visitors. The project, which includes $750,000 in state funds, also involves renovation of the former First Baptist Church into a community center.

Since the 1909 Lincoln Centennial, the Hodgenville square has been home to a bronze statue of Lincoln. Trouble was, the statue was right at the crossroads of Lincoln Boulevard and U.S. 31E, and tourists often stepped out into lanes of traffic to get the snapshot they wanted.

By mid-September, just in time for Hodgenville’s annual Lincoln Days Celebration in October, workers will have completed an “island” in the square surrounded by a traffic roundabout. The old statue of Lincoln is within the island and out of the way of traffic. It will be joined in 2008 by a new statue depicting the boy Lincoln and his dog, with a dedication to follow in 2009.

Other attractions will be going up elsewhere. Springfield will erect a statue of Lincoln at its new courthouse; the old Washington County courthouse will become a history museum.

A $2 million state memorial to Lincoln will be created at Louisville’s Waterfront Park, which will act as a gateway to promote other Lincoln sites in Kentucky. While visiting the Speed family in Louisville, Lincoln saw slaves shackled together at that waterfront, said state Sen. Dan Kelly, co-chairman of the Kentucky Bicentennial Commission.

That group has distributed more than $1 million to different projects across the state, including museum exhibits, public art, plays and teacher training workshops. That is about one-third of the total that will be distributed, said Warren Greer, program coordinator for the Kentucky Historical Society.

The state commission is also encouraging teachers to present the Lincoln story so that students have a better appreciation of the role Kentucky played in slavery debate, the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation.

In addition, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois are working together to promote an updated Lincoln Heritage Trail, in which tourists may follow the route of Lincoln’s birth, boyhood, law practice and early political career.

“People have been coming here to see Lincoln’s birthplace since 1916,” when the U.S. Department of the Interior took over the birthplace site, said Iris LaRue, director of Hodgenville’s Lincoln Museum. “And they keep coming year after year after year.”

They’re people like Lon and Brenda Wadkins of Silver Lake, Ind., who dropped by the birthplace on the way back from a family reunion in Prestonsburg. Lon Wadkins said he learned several things about Lincoln that he didn’t know.

“Everybody gets the impression that people from Kentucky are not as intelligent, and yet someone as smart as him went to the White House,” he said.

(c) 2007, Lexington Herald-Leader (Lexington, Ky.).

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.