Mock rail fence

Saturday, January 19, 2019

Abraham Lincoln was born Feb. 12, 1809. As a young man in the early 1800s, he and his friends hired themselves out to split logs into rails and built rail fences for his father and neighboring farmers in and around La Rue County, Kentucky. Lincoln's family moved to Decatur, Illinois, in 1830. Oak trees and cedar trees were preferred for making fence rails because of their durability, strength and straight grain of the wood. They used axes and wedges to split out the fence rails.

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