Henry Brooner died April 4, 1890, two years after the above statements were given, at the age of eighty-six. Everybody loved and respected "Uncle Henry." Reference will be made in another chapter to further statements made by him on the same occasion.
Allen Brooner was nine years younger than his brother Henry. He was born in Kentucky, October 22, 1813. He was a minister in the United Brethren Church more than fifty years. Among other items, he gave me the following, which were written at the time:
"During my mother's last sickness, Mrs. Lincoln, the mother of Abraham Lincoln, came to see her. Mother said, 'I believe I will have to die.' Mrs. Lincoln said, 'Oh, you may outlive me.' She died just one week from the death of my mother. This was in October, 1818. I was five years old when mother died. I remember some one came to me in the night and told me my mother was dead. Thomas Lincoln made mother's coffin, and sawed the lumber with a whip-saw to make the coffin. She was taken on a sled to the graveyard on a hill, one quarter of a mile south of where Lincoln City now stands. Old man Howell took the corpse. He rode the horse hitched to the sled, and took me up, and I rode on the horse before him. I remember that his long beard bothered me. We did not have wagons in those days. The first wagon I ever saw, my father made, and it had wooden tires."
Reference will be made again to some facts stated by this associate of Abraham Lincoln. "Uncle Allen" died at his old home, near Dale, Spencer County, Indiana, April 2, 1902, in his eighty-ninth year, respected by all. I am indebted to his daughter, Mrs. Sarah Knowlton, for his photograph, taken at seventy-five years of age.
Nancy Hanks Lincoln died October 5, 1818, when her daughter Sarah was eleven and her son Abraham was nine years old. Abraham's mother had taught him to read and write, and, young as he was, he wrote for an old minister, David Elkin, whom the family had known in Kentucky, to come and preach his mother's funeral. Some time after, the minister came and the funeral was preached at the grave where many people had gathered. The minister stated that he had come because of the letter he had received from the little son of the dead mother. As I have stood by that grave, in my imagination I have seen that primitive congregation—the old minister, the lonely husband, and the two motherless children, Sarah and Abraham, on that sad occasion.