After all, he launched his political career in Illinois, represented Illinois’ 7th district in the United States House of Representatives, won Illinois in the 1860 presidential campaign, and after his tragic death, was buried in Illinois.
But what many Americans don’t realize is that Lincoln was born in Kentucky and called it home for the first seven years of his life. The first president born west of the Appalachian Mountains, Lincoln resided in a humble log cabin first in Sinking Spring for two years and then in Knob Creek, Kentucky, which had some of the best farmland in the young state. While still more of a frontier than a settled space, Kentucky experienced a population boom throughout the 1810s, containing over 500,000 people by the time the Lincoln family decamped for Indiana in 1816.
