According to Thomas’s stepson-in-law, John J. Hall, “Thomas Lincoln did not improve with age nor with increasing responsibilities. He was still the same kind and genial ‘fellow,’ but grew more and more shiftless and good for nothing as the years rolled on.” At the rocky Nolin Creek farm, Hall reported, “he did not cultivate the soil nor ‘fix up’ the old shanty.” In Illinois, Tom, along with his stepson, John D. Johnston, and Johnston’s five sons, tilled only 40 of their 120 acres. In an area where the average farm was worth $1,600, Tom valued his farm at $100 in the 1850 census, even though he was older than his neighbors, had had time to accumulate more property, and had a large number of family hands to work the land. Thomas ranked behind 79 percent of his neighbors in terms of wealth. George B. Balch, an Illinois neighbor, noted that while most farmers took their crops to market in a wagon, Tom Lincoln used “a basket or a large tray.” Balch characterized Thomas as “uneducated, illiterate, and contented with a ‘from hand to mouth’ living”—in sum, “an excellent spec[imen] of poor white trash,” “rough,” “lazy,” and “worthless.” He owned a “few sheep” behind which he “talked an[d] walked slow.” Balch added that “[s]everal anecdotes of his ignorance and singularity might be related, but we forbear.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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