"He was born in Kentucky ..."

-From Aaron Copland's "A Lincoln Portrait"

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This was, and is, bluegrass country. Horses graze here, some worth millions and some not, and cattle. Wild turkeys startle drivers as they cross the farm roads. Vultures hover, hoping an occasional turkey doesn't quite make it.

Here, too, on the Freeman Lake shoreline, can be found Abraham Lincoln's birthplace near Hodgenville, Ky. The highlight of the town is the Lincoln Museum, an earnest attempt to trace the man's life through a series of dioramas with life-size figures.

The main Lincoln historic site is three miles away from Hodgenville on Sinking Spring Farm where on Feb. 12, 1809, he was born to Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln in a log cabin built of local hardwoods by his father. Today, approaching the child's 200th birthday, thousands come here annually to see this cabin that sits inside a marble-and-granite mini-Parthenon above 56 steps representing the president's lifespan.

A temple-like structure honoring a famously humble guy just doesn't seem ... right.

Plus, the cabin is a fake. Tests in the 1950s confirmed the "birth" cabin was probably built sometime around 1846.

"Because it's not his house doesn't mean he wasn't born here," insists Jennie Jones, a National Park Service ranger at the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site for 16 years. "This is the land, the farm, the location, the actual site where he was born, in a log cabin like the one you saw at the memorial in Hodgenville-but that happens not to be his."

The Lincoln family, who moved to Sinking Spring in 1808, weren't there long. A court battle over the farm's ownership-which we won't get into-sent the family in 1811 to another farm 10 miles away along Knob Creek. "My earliest recollection ... is of the Knob Creek place," Lincoln wrote years later.

As it happens, Lincoln's teacher in Knob Creek, Caleb Hazel, was an abolitionist, which in the way of teachers and pupils likely affected the lad. At Knob Creek, it's said, he could have seen slaves for the first time, on the road outside the family cabin.

And then, it was time to move again. Abraham Lincoln, already partially shaped, was 7.

"... raised in Indiana ..."

The Ohio River is maybe a mile wide at the point where, in 1816, Thomas, Nancy, daughter Sarah and son Abraham ferried from Kentucky to Indiana near the river town of Troy. It was settled in 1804, and by the time the Lincolns arrived it had already established itself as a steamboat port.

Thomas Lincoln built his farm north of what is now state highway 162 near today's Gentryville. The farm buildings have been reconstructed; the actual site of the Lincoln cabin is marked with bronze logs and a fireplace.

A memorial visitor center, completed in the 1940s and featuring exterior reliefs representing moments in the president's career, doubles as a museum containing a useful timeline tracing his 14 years at this, his boyhood home.

Lincoln's own writings on these years are sketchy. So with no original buildings and no certainty what took place here, why come here at all? Because this is where Abraham Lincoln became Abraham Lincoln.

Before Lincoln became Honest Abe, he picked up honesty from his dad, Honest Tom.

The young Lincoln's love for books emerged here, and the first courtroom experience for the lad who became a lawyer came in Indiana, over a squabble regarding his operating an Ohio River shuttle that seemed to violate a ferry operator's exclusive rights. He represented himself, and he won. He was 17.

And the genuine compassion of the man, reflected in letters he wrote to soldiers' families, and in his pardons of enemy troops, likely stemmed from his days on the Indiana farm. Two women he'd been close to-his mother and his sister Sarah-died in his boyhood home.

"... and lived in Illinois."

A flatter and better Illinois beckoned.

Thomas Lincoln remarried and the family eventually crossed the Wabash, presumably where today's ornate Lincoln Memorial Bridge carries U.S. Highway 50 traffic over the river. On the Illinois side of the bridge, set in a small park, is the Lincoln Trail State Memorial.

From 1830 until his election to the presidency, Lincoln went just about everywhere in Illinois. There are homes where he slept, courthouses where he practiced law, statues that would embarrass him today.

At 22, he had left his family and settled in New Salem. There, in 1832, he declared his candidacy for the state legislature, joined the Black Hawk War (and was chosen by peers as captain), didn't see an Indian, came back to New Salem and lost the election.

Where they did know him, in New Salem and nearby areas, he almost swept, says Charlie Starling, head interpreter at Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site. Two years later, with more time to campaign, he was elected easily.

All the New Salem buildings, except one, are reconstructions. The exception is Henry Onstot's cooper shop. It's real. "According to the traditional information," says Starling, "this (the cooperage) is where Lincoln studied after he worked all day." When he worked at all.

It seems the rail-splitter, rather than split rails, told stories. People listened and enjoyed the stories, which annoyed other people, who thought they all should have been working instead of hearing and telling stories. Says Starling: "We have people who lived here who said, `He was lazy. He was real lazy.' Why was that? `He spent so much time reading, wasting time.'

"But this was where Lincoln really got his foundation with people."

When he left New Salem for Springfield in 1837, he had been a postmaster, surveyor, storekeeper, politician and become a licensed lawyer.

You know about Springfield, about the home, and the Old Capitol and the depot and the tomb and the Lincoln-Herndon law office. If you haven't been to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, see it all if you can, but do not miss two exhibits: "The Civil War in Four Minutes," an electronic map that shows the progress of the war while keeping a running count of the horrendous casualties; and a reproduction of the president's casket and the House chamber in the Old Capitol in which it rested. Then cross the street to the Old Capitol and see the House chamber.

And remember how far, on this journey from childhood to adult, you and the 16th president of these United States have traveled together.

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WHERE LINCOLN LIVED:

KENTUCKY: Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site, near Hodgenville: Sinking Spring Farm (birthplace), 3 miles from town; Knob Creek Farm (early boyhood home), 9 miles from town. 270-358-3137, nps.gov/abli

Lincoln Museum, Hodgenville. 270-358-3163, lincolnmuseum-ky.org

INDIANA: Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, near Lincoln City. 812-937-4541, nps.gov/libo

ILLINOIS: Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site, near Petersburg. 217-632-4000, lincolnsnewsalem.com

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum, Springfield. 800-610-2094, alplm.org

Springfield sites: Lincoln tomb, house, law offices, Old State Capitol and more. 800-545-7300, visit-springfieldillinois.com