| Adam Shoemaker, Preacher and Teacher of Abraham Lincoln | |
| Adam Shoemaker was the son of John Shoemaker, a Revolutionary War Patriot serving with the Westmorland Rangers at Fort Pitt as an Indian Scout, and his wife Catherine Hoover (VanHoosier). The Shoemakers came into Kentucky with their four sons, John Jr., Adam, Stephen, Jacob and two daughters from Fort Pitt, Fayette Co., Pennsylvania. By 1802 they were in Breckinridge Co., KY on Sinking Creek. Adam, John’s son, hating slavery crossed the Ohio River into Rome before Indiana was opened for settlement and received statehood. Adam purchased his land near Rome then after his father’s passing in 1818, his mother, brothers and sisters all moved to Indiana. Adam’s younger brother Jacob, had died young and rests near his father in the Shoemaker Cemetery in Breckinridge Co. KY. Some time after the death of John Shoemaker, Sr., Adam moved to Hurricane Creek, where he taught school. He was the third minister at the Little Pigeon Creek Church in Spencer County, Indiana, where one of his parishioners and students was young Abe Lincoln whose position on slavery was influenced by the teachings of Adam Shoemaker. He had a gangly boy in his Sunday School class and occasionally in his school. The boy would also work cleaning the church and would later give Adam the credit for starting him on his road to opposing slavery. The above story of Adam Shoemaker teaching young Abe Lincoln was told to Indiana Senator John C. Shoemaker, a nephew of Adam’s, by Abraham Lincoln himself while in Indianapolis when on his way from Springfield to Washington for his inauguration in 1861. | Adam Shoemaker was founder of the Hurricane Baptist Church in the Hurricane Valley community of Clark Township, Perry County, Indiana. The church and the community are long gone. But Hurricane Creek still flows through the valley. Near the old Hurricane Church site is the Shoemaker-Cox Cemetery, where Adam Shoemaker rests, preserving the memories of the abolitionist’s legacy making this world a better place. The Adam Shoemaker’s legacy lives on today at the Shubael Little Pioneer Village near the community of Cannelton. After hearing of its existence, Adam’s GG Grandaughter found the old one room log cabin, built within a private residence, that Adam himself built in 1830’s for his family. Here in this cabin the young Abe Lincoln had visited many times. The Shoemaker Cabin located in the northern boarder of Perry County, was purchased by the Perry County Museum, dismantled and rebuilt at the Shubael Little Pioneer Village, one-half mile north of Rocky Point and five miles east of Cannelton, on State Road 66. The Shoemaker Cabin was dedicated in 2004 and today stand within a 1850s village, along with the Carter, Hinton, and Falls Cabins, a Blacksmith shop, Mercantile, and nearby, the one room Millstone School, which is under reconstruction. Adam Shoemaker’s, the Preacher and Teacher of Abraham Lincoln, legacy lives on to teach school children, and the public alike, what it was like to live in a 1800’s community.
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