Hodgenville
| Hodgenville | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Location in Kentucky
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| Basic data | |||
| Foundation : | 1839 | ||
| State : | United States | ||
| State : | Kentucky | ||
| County : | LaRue County | ||
| Coordinates : | 37 ° 34 ′ N , 85 ° 44 ′ W | ||
| Time zone : | Eastern ( UTC − 5 / −4 ) | ||
| Residents : | 3,206 (as of 2010) | ||
| Population density : | 712.4 inhabitants per km 2 | ||
| Area : | 4.5 km 2 (approx. 2 mi 2 ) of which 4.5 km 2 (approx. 2 mi 2 ) is land |
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| Height : | 222 m | ||
| Postal code : | 42748 | ||
| Area code : | +1 270 | ||
| FIPS : | 21-37396 | ||
| GNIS ID : | 0494334 | ||
| Website : | hodgenville.ky.gov | ||
 The LaRue County Courthouse in Hodgenville |
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Hodgenville is the capital of LaRue County in the US state of Kentucky and the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln , the 16th President of the United States of America . According to the 2010 census , Hodgenville had 3,206 inhabitants, of which 87 percent were white and 9 percent were black. Of the 16 churches in the town, seven belong to Baptist congregations.
geography
The city is located in central Kentucky near the Rolling Fork, a small tributary of the Ohio . The next largest city is Louisville . Even Fort Knox is located near Hodgenville.
history
The first settlement in the area of what would later become Hodgenville arose after 1788 around the mill of a certain Robert Hodgen. Ten years before the city was officially founded, the future President Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 in a one-room log cabin about three miles to the south. Two years later, the Lincoln family moved to another log cabin about ten miles northeast of town before leaving Kentucky entirely for Indiana in 1816 .
Although Abraham Lincoln only spent his early childhood here and hardly anything of his family's original dwellings has been preserved, Hodgenville is now home to two memorials:
- Abraham Lincoln's Birthplace from 1911, a classical temple building in which there is a "symbolic" replica of the birthplace as well
- the Abraham Lincoln Boyhood Home , built in 1931 on the site of the Lincoln family's second cabin on Knob Creek. This historic log house is not an original either.
The two houses have been designated as memorials since 1916, today under the name Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park of the type of a National Historical Park and are looked after by the National Park Service .
