It was in the summer of 1831 that Abraham Lincoln performed his first official act.  Minter Graham, the school-teacher, tells the story.  “On the day of the election, in the month of August, Abe was seen loitering about the polling place.  It was but a few days after his arrival in New Salem.  They were ‘short of a clerk’ at the polls; and, after casting about in vain for some one competent to fill the office, it occurred to one of the judges that perhaps the tall stranger possessed the needful qualifications.  He thereupon accosted him, and asked if he could write.  He replied, ‘Yes, a little.’  ’Will you act as clerk of the election to-day?’ said the judge.  ‘I will try,’ returned Abe, ’and do the best I can, if you so request.’” He did try accordingly, and, in the language of the schoolmaster, “performed the duties with great facility, firmness, honesty, and impartiality.  I clerked with him,” says Mr. Graham, “on the same day and at the same polls.  The election books are now in the city of Springfield, where they can be seen and inspected any day.”

That the foregoing anecdotes bearing on the early life of Abraham Lincoln are approximately correct is borne out by Lincoln himself.  At the urgent request of Hon. Jesse W. Fell, of Bloomington, Illinois, Lincoln wrote a sketch of himself to be used during the campaign of 1860.  In a note which accompanied the sketch he said:  “Herewith is a little sketch, as you requested.  There is not much to it, for the reason, I suppose, that there is not much of me.  If anything be made out of it I wish it to be modest and not to go beyond the material.”  The letter is as follows: 

I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky.  My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguishable families—­second families, perhaps I should say.  My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams, and others in Macon Counties, Illinois.  My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky, about 1781 or ’2, where, a year or two later, he was killed by Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest.  His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania.  An effort to identify them with the New England family of the same name, ended in nothing more than a similarity of Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like.

My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age, and he grew up literally without education.  He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year.  We reached our new home about the time the State came into the Union.  It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods.  There I grew up.  There were some schools, so called, but no qualification