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Abraham Lincoln’s Mother Died After Being Poisoned By A Cow

One of America’s greatest leaders lost an important part of his life as a child due to a tragic accident

Andrew Martin
4 min readDec 21, 2021

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Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, is still recognized as one of the greatest leaders the country has ever had. He was known for his pensive and pragmatic nature that he in part fostered after losing his mother Nancy Hanks Lincoln at an early age. However, it’s not widely known that his horrible loss was because she was poisoned by a cow.

Born into a frontier family, Lincoln came into this world in a Kentucky log cabin and moved with his family to the wilds of Indiana when he was still a child. It was a rugged upbringing, as his family more often than not lived on the fringes of settlements, breaking new ground

In 1818, when Lincoln was just 9, his mother suddenly passed away. She had been caring for a sick neighbor (who ended up having the same affliction) before suddenly falling ill and succumbing herself about two weeks later. Her death wasn’t caused by catching something in her act of being a good Samaritan but rather from a milk illness that afflicted a number of other people in the area.

It turned out that the cause of Nancy’s death was drinking tainted milk that had…

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Andrew Martin
Andrew Martin

Written by Andrew Martin

Dabbler in soccer, history, investing & writing. Master’s degree in baseball history. Passionate about history, diversity, culture, sports, film and investing .

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