-
Born in a log cabin in Hodgenville, KY to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln
-
In the Spring, the Lincoln family moves to the 230-acre Knob Creek Farm 10 miles from Sinking Spring
-
Nancy Hanks Lincoln dies of "milk sickness", one of several in the settlement who died. The illness is caused by drinking milk or eating meat from a cow that has eaten a toxic plant, white snakeroot.
-
Lincoln earns his first dollar ferrying passengers to the steamboats on the Ohio River
-
Lincoln and Allen Gentry take a flatboat of farm produce to New Orleans. Several black men attempt to rob them but Lincoln and Gentry fight them off. Lincoln observes a slave auction in New Orleans.
-
The Black Hawk War breaks out and Lincoln forms the 31st Regiment of the Illinois Militia with his neighbors, who elect him as captain. His company is mustered out of service at the end of May and he enlists in another regiment for 20 days, then joins Captain Jacob M. Early’s spy company from mid-June to July 10. Lincoln saw no military action during his months of service but does accompany a detail to retrieve and bury the bodies of several militiamen killed in a skirmish.
-
In the summer, he begins to study law, using books borrowed from John Todd Stuart, whom he had met during their service in the Black Hawk War.
-
He accepts a challenge to a duel by Democratic state auditor James Shields but the duel is averted.
-
Lincoln marries Mary Todd after an on and off again courtship.
-
Mary gives birth to Robert Todd Lincoln, who is named in honor of Mary's father
-
Edward Lincoln dies a month before his fourth birthday of diphtheria or tuberculosis
-
Elected 16th president of the United States, beating Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, John C. Breckinridge of the Southern Democrats, and John Bell of the new Constitutional Union Party. 1st president of the Republican Party.
-
William Lincoln dies at age 11 of typhus. Mary Todd Lincoln is devastated and, some say, never fully recovers.
-
Lincoln and his wife, Mary, see the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater. About 10:30 pm, during the third act of the play, John Wilkes Booth shoots the 56-year-old president in the head. Doctors attend to the president in the theater then move him to a house across the street. He never regained consciousness and dies at 7:22 the following the morning.
