When Made: 1803-1806 Thomas Lincoln Age: 25-28
Last Known Location: Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum, Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee.
Thomas Lincoln created this beautifully constructed cherry corner cupboard. It was most likely used by his family in their Mill Creek home in Hardin County, Kentucky, where they lived from 1803 to 1806.
The cupboard is 88 inches tall, 53 inches wide, and 24 inches deep from the front to the rear corner.
The original base has been replaced with a modern one of antique design, probably sometime in the late 1930’s or early 1940’s. The cupboard has two large upper doors and a pair of smaller doors on the base. There are three shelves in the upper section. The interior is made of wide poplar boards.
A cabinetmaker’s skill can best be determined by his inlay, and Thomas Lincoln excelled in that skill.
A wooden strip 49 inches long and 2.6 inches wide runs along the outer edge of each of the upper doors. These two strips are inlaid with streamers and are topped with a circle, inside of which is inlaid a four-pointed star design-- “star and streamer” design.
A carved and inlaid “hole and tooth” or “dentil” decoration runs along the top of the cupboard’s front.
This design appears on other cupboards of this period, but only Thomas Lincoln of all the pioneer cabinetmakers, attached the inlaid strips to his corner cupboard facings.
A legend persists in the Mill Creek area of Hardin County, Kentucky that while Thomas was transporting the cupboard to Indiana, the cupboard toppled out of a wagon into a rain swollen creek and was abandoned by Thomas. There are two versions as to exactly when the cabinet fell into the creek.
One version is that Thomas Lincoln made a flatboat journey to Indiana in the late summer or early fall of 1816 to mark land he was going to claim there. Some say that it was on this occasion that his boat capsized in the Rolling Fork River and the cupboard and Thomas’ tools and nails fell into the creek.
The other version is that the cupboard was lost when Thomas Lincoln and his family moved by horse and wagon to Indiana in the late fall of 1816. Some say it was then that the cupboard fell into a swollen stream and was abandoned
The loss of nails in the capsize explains why the Thomas Lincoln cabinets made while he was in Elizabethtown, Kentucky used nails and those first made in Southern Indiana were put together with wooden pegs.
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Sometime thereafter, John T. Cowley rescued the cupboard from the creek and salvaged and restored the cupboard.22 Later the cupboard was sold at the Cowley sale to Mrs. Martha Viers for fifty cents.
Mrs. Viers then gave the cupboard to Mrs. Amos Garner.
R. Gerald McMurtry learned of the cupboard on a research trip to Hardin County, Kentucky and on August 23, 1938, he purchased the piece from Mrs. Garner for $17.50, the price of a new cupboard that Mrs. Garner had seen for sale and admired.
McMurtry concluded that Thomas Lincoln likely made the cupboard. McMurtry had it restored to repair damage caused by mice and critters and to remove later additions to the original piece. Among these additions he thought were the inlaid strips alongside the doors, but McMurtry wanted them to be preserved. He later became convinced that the strips were original, and they are now reattached to the upper portion of the cupboard.23
In February 1961, this cupboard was in the possession of Gerald McMurtry, Fort Wayne, Indiana. It is now (2019) in the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum, Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee.24
Courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum, Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee
22 Thomas Lincoln’s Corner Cupboards, Lincoln Lore, Bulletin of The Lincoln National Life Foundation, Number 1476, February 1961, pp. 1-4, Dr. R. Gerald McMurtry, editor, published by The Lincoln National Life Insurance Company, Fort Wayne, Indiana. (Hereafter referred to as Lincoln Lore Number 1476.) Some of this information comes from a February 6, 1939, Lincoln Lore. McMurtry gave this piece the designation “ I”.
23 See also Lincoln Herald (XLV) February 1943, pp. 19-22. R. Gerald McMurtry’s research on the cupboard is in a binder series housed in the vault of the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum, Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee.
https://lmulibrary.on.worldcat.org/search?queryString=au%3DThomas%20Lincoln.&databaseList=638
24 Lincoln Memorial Museum and Library, Lincoln Memorial University, 6965 Cumberland Gap Parkway, Harrogate, TN 37752 (850).512-5019 www.LMUnet.edu The photographs of this piece have been provided courtesy of the Lincoln Memorial Museum and Library.
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Courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum, Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee
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A bronze plaque attached to the inside of the top right door reads:
THOMAS LINCOLN’S CORNER CUPBOARD/This cupboard was made by Thomas Lincoln, the father of the Sixteenth President, While a resident of Hardin County, Kentucky./Purchased by R. Gerald McMurtry/August 23, 1938.
Courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum, Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee
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