GDG- Re: That's a lot of rails split!

[Bill and Glenna Jo Christen]

>From: "Bob Huddleston" <huddleston.r at comcast.net>
>Subject: RE: GDG- That's a lot of rails split!
>
>I would suspect this is the fee he got from the ICRR, which he had to go to court to collect. And that after saving the RR millions in taxes! 
>
More mythology:

In Lincoln's own words (Don E.  Fehrenbacher  and Virginia Fehrenbacher, 
eds., Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln (Stanford, California: 
Stanford University Press, 1996), 43):

"Now let me tell you about that [railspiting]. I am not a bit anxious 
about my reputation in that line of business; but if there is anything 
in this world that I am a judge of, it is a good felling of timber, but 
I don't remember having worked by myself at splitting rails for one 
whole day in my life . . ." [emphasis added]

Unfortunately, I do not have a copy of the book at hand to add to the 
particulars of the quote other than it came in a response to a question 
posed to Lincoln by Noah Brooks, a confidant.

At about age twelve, Lincoln helped his father split enough timber to 
enclose a lot on five acres of land in Indiana. This was the story he 
told Captain D. V. Derickson. It was published in an 1888 memoir in the 
Meadville (Pennsylvania) Tribune-Republican. One might assume that as a 
twelve year old he night have dome more watching the splitting given the 
nature of his father's temperament and the attention span of most twelve 
year olds.

Bill Christen