Abraham Lincoln grew from youth to manhood on this southern Indiana soil. Many character and moral traits of one of the world's most respected leaders was formed and nurtured here. Explore Lincoln's boyhood and learn about the boy who would one day become the leader of our nation.
After several months of extensive preservation work including exterior lead paint abatement and maintenance updates, the home is ready to once again welcome visitors. Scheduled tours are now available Tuesday through Sunday and are limited to 10 guests per time slot. Tickets may only be purchased onsite.
David and Ida Eisenhower purchased their home on South East Fourth Street from David's brother, Abraham Lincoln Eisenhower. The family moved into the six-room home in late 1898. The title changed from Abraham to Ida on April 4, 1899, for the sum of $1,000. Ida in turn sold the house to David for $1.00 on May 18, 1908. The real estate consisted of all but two lots of the block bordered on the west by Chestnut (now Kuney) Street, the east by Olive Street, north by South East Third Street and the south by South East Fourth. The Eisenhower property had between 2.5-3 acres which contained the house, a large barn, chicken house, smoke house, outhouse, orchard, strawberry patch, and a large kitchen garden located to the east of the house.
In 1900, Grandfather Jacob Eisenhower moved in with David, Ida and their six sons. At that time, two bedrooms and a walk-through closet were added to the east side of the house. The new south bedroom was used by David and Ida, with Jacob using the smaller north bedroom. Jacob lived with the family until his death in 1906.
The north bedroom was converted to the indoor bathroom around 1908. The last addition to the Eisenhower home consisted of a small kitchen, pantry and an enclosed back porch added in 1915. The home is furnished as it was at the time of Ida Eisenhower's death in 1946. The furnishings are original to the home although some have been moved to accommodate visitors touring the home. The wallpapers in the two parlors, dining room, and hallway are identical to the papers in the home in 1946.
When Ida Eisenhower passed away in 1946, her six sons donated the property to the Eisenhower Foundation. It has been open to the public since early 1947, originally as a World War II Veterans Memorial and now as the boyhood home of Dwight David Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States.
A long driveway meandered up a gentle rise under an extensive canopy of Colorado ponderosa pines. On my left, a creek drainage harbored a well-worn treehouse. Early evening light highlighted bikes, skateboards, paintball guns, and other boyhood accessories, all of which testified to a world of adventure and play.
I was a young man, fresh out of college and brimming with questions that were only assuaged by the lives and stories of older men. I tried intently to put words to my questions and to risk the vulnerability of seeking proximity to older men to whom I could bring my curiosity.
The elder I sought out that long-ago evening was named Mark. He was the father of five young boys and an executive for the same company where I was low man on the totem pole. Every time I ran into him, he stood out from the crowd, generating a larger-than-life atmosphere around him.
It has taken me years to articulate what drew me to Mark. Now I have words for it: Mark was a man who had been effectively initiated into the world of men. He was a man who had faced the specter of death and passed through into a Life greater than his own. From that place of initiation, Mark was connected with the life of God in a measure that was unhinged from circumstances and unable to be destroyed by the things of this world.
Cherie dropped Joshua off on a winter night, leaving him to walk into a warm room filled with celebration and masculine love. His smile said it all, as he looked beyond the mounds of Chick-fil-A nuggets to the handful of the men who love me and him and with whom we share life.
On this night we participated in a contemporary expression of an ancient rite contiguous with preceding cultures and epochs of human history. Each man spoke words of blessing over Joshua, and together we presented him with gifts, inviting him into communion with a company of men and with a Father who orchestrates it all.
That day, the celebration was boyhood. And with both my repentance and my strength, I was able to pledge my fiercest commitment to preserve, protect, and supernaturally partner with the Father to lengthen boyhood, as long as we both shall live.
The loss of boyhood is one of the great destructive realities that keeps most of us from ever becoming wholehearted and true. And the recovery and restoration of boyhood, for us and for our sons, is one of the great promises of the Kingdom of God. Whether at 12, 22, or 62, we are invited to turn to the Father and ask Him to restore the boy in us and to teach us to celebrate the boy in the hearts of our sons and the men we love.
Arguing that Muslim boyhood has been invented as a threat within an ideology that seeks to predict future terrorism, Shenila Khoja-Moolji examines American public culture to show how Muslim boyhood is seen as a bridge between actual past terrorism and possible future events to justify preemptive enclosure, surveillance, and punishment.
Shenila Khoja-Moolji is the Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani Associate Professor of Muslim Societies at Georgetown University. She is author of Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia; Sovereign Attachments: Masculinity, Muslimness, and Affective Politics in Pakistan; and Rebuilding Community: Displaced Women and the Making of a Shia Ismaili Muslim Sociality.
The Ulysses S. Grant Homestead Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of the general and president's history. The organization maintains Grant's boyhood home and the school he attended as a boy, both located in Georgetown, Ohio. With the help of the Ohio Historical Connection, the Association strives to keep alive the history and spirit of Georgetown, and the part it played in forming this great American.
I was not in the least depressed on this occasion, for my mind was not so muchturned upon what I had left as upon what was awaiting me. In proportion as thevarious objects connected with the sad recollections which had recently filledmy imagination receded behind me, those recollections lost their power, andgave place to a consolatory feeling of life, youthful vigour, freshness, andhope.
On the contrary, a continual succession of new and exciting objects and placesnow caught and held my attention, and the charms of spring awakened in my soula soothing sense of satisfaction with the present and of blissful hope for thefuture.
In the coffee-room, a tea-kettle was already surmounting the fire which Milkathe ostler, as red in the face as a crab, was blowing with a pair of bellows.All was grey and misty in the courtyard, like steam from a smoking dunghill,but in the eastern sky the sun was diffusing a clear, cheerful radiance, andmaking the straw roofs of the sheds around the courtyard sparkle with the nightdew. Beneath them stood our horses, tied to mangers, and I could hear theceaseless sound of their chewing. A curly-haired dog which had been spendingthe night on a dry dunghill now rose in lazy fashion and, wagging its tail,walked slowly across the courtyard.
The bustling landlady opened the creaking gates, turned her meditative cowsinto the street (whence came the lowing and bellowing of other cattle), andexchanged a word or two with a sleepy neighbour. Philip, with his shirt-sleevesrolled up, was working the windlass of a draw-well, and sending sparkling freshwater coursing into an oaken trough, while in the pool beneath it someearly-rising ducks were taking a bath. It gave me pleasure to watch hisstrongly-marked, bearded face, and the veins and muscles as they stood out uponhis great powerful hands whenever he made an extra effort. In the room behindthe partition-wall where Mimi and the girls had slept (yet so near to ourselvesthat we had exchanged confidences overnight) movements now became audible,their maid kept passing in and out with clothes, and, at last the door openedand we were summoned to breakfast. Woloda, however, remained in a state ofbustle throughout as he ran to fetch first one article and then another andurged the maid to hasten her preparations.
The sun was just rising, covered with dense white clouds, and every objectaround us was standing out in a cheerful, calm sort of radiance. The whole wasbeautiful to look at, and I felt comfortable and light of heart.
Before us the road ran like a broad, sinuous ribbon through cornfieldsglittering with dew. Here and there a dark bush or young birch-tree cast a longshadow over the ruts and scattered grass-tufts of the track. Yet even themonotonous din of our carriage-wheels and collar-bells could not drown thejoyous song of soaring larks, nor the combined odour of moth-eaten cloth, dust,and sourness peculiar to our britchka overpower the fresh scents of themorning. I felt in my heart that delightful impulse to be up and doing which isa sign of sincere enjoyment.
As I had not been able to say my prayers in the courtyard of the inn, but hadnevertheless been assured once that on the very first day when I omitted toperform that ceremony some misfortune would overtake me, I now hastened torectify the omission. Taking off my cap, and stooping down in a corner of thebritchka, I duly recited my orisons, and unobtrusively signed the signof the cross beneath my coat. Yet all the while a thousand different objectswere distracting my attention, and more than once I inadvertently repeated aprayer twice over.
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