When Lincoln was nineteen years old he made his first trip as a hired hand on a flat boat loaded with locally produced goods to be sold in New Orleans. While on the trip Lincoln and his colleague were attacked by river pirates but escaped.

Two years later, in 1830, the Lincoln family was again on the move, this time to Illinois. In March they settled along the Sangamon River, ten miles southwest of Decatur.

"Here they built a log-cabin, into which they removed, and made sufficient of rails to fence ten acres of ground, fenced and broke the ground, and raised a crop of sow[n] corn upon it the same year."

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