Town aims to share Lincoln limelight

HODGENVILLE, Ky. — Never mind that young Abe left in obscurity after his family's frontier land squabbles. Or that years later voters from his old Kentucky home didn't support his run for the presidency.

This town now proudly embraces Abraham Lincoln as a native son, though its status as his birthplace hasn't kept it from being overshadowed by other places more famously associated with the Great Emancipator.

But locals are hoping that changes with a two-year national celebration commemorating the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's 1809 birth in a small cabin at Sinking Spring farm near what became Hodgenville.

"We hope the world will know that Hodgenville exists. This is where Lincoln came from, and this is our heritage," said Janice Bowen, among the area residents preparing to serve as volunteer ambassadors to greet out-of-towners and answer questions.

Volunteers even took hospitality lessons, though residents take pride in their small-town manners.

Hodgenville — a central Kentucky town of about 3,000, established a couple of years after Lincoln's family left for Indiana — has been spruced up in preparation for the hoped-for tourists.

The smell of fresh paint recently wafted through the quaint Lincoln Museum, where visitors can gaze upon a life-size portrait of the famous native Kentuckian, dioramas tracing his life and a three-drawer chest crafted by a man who as a childhood friend of Lincoln saved the future president from drowning. Outside, a new roundabout leads traffic past a striking Lincoln statue that serves as the centerpiece of town square.

"Most people are looking at it as company's coming," said Iris LaRue, the Lincoln Museum director.

Lincoln seems omnipresent. His name is attached to a bank, an elementary school and even a consignment shop. A new sculpture portraying a youthful Lincoln will be unveiled downtown on May 31. But in the 1860 election that catapulted Lincoln to the White House as the 16th president, he received only a handful of votes from LaRue County — where the Lincoln birthplace is located, an indication that locals didn't realize he was a native son, said Tommy Turner, the county judge-executive.

The Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site features an imposing neoclassical structure made of granite and marble that enshrines a tiny cabin symbolic of the rustic homestead where Lincoln was born.