Frontier Life - Hartford, CT
Posted by: 
neoc1
N 41° 46.018 W 072° 40.009
18T E 693937 N 4626534
Frontier Life is the title of a sculpture located at the Lincoln Financial Sculpture Walk at Riverfront in Hartford, CT.
Waymark Code: WMFF8G
Location: Connecticut, United States
Date Posted: 10/10/2012
Views: 5
Sixteen abstract and traditional sculptures related to the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln are installed along the Lincoln Financial Sculpture Walk at Riverfront in Hartford and East Hartford. Lincoln Financial is an insurance company based in Philadelphia with offices in Hartford.
Lincoln grew up poor. His family moved first to Indiana then to Illinois. Both times Lincoln had to help the family clear the land and construct a log cabin home. This sculpture by Neil Goodman arranges an ax, tree stump and a small log structure within an étagère.
A nearby plaque contains a quote from Lincoln quoting the poet Thomas Gray about his early life on the frontier and the story of how Abraham Lincoln achieved his image as a rail-splitter. The plaque is inscribed:
{Profile of Lincoln}
Lincoln
Financial
Sculpture
Walk at
Riverfront
{five wavy lines}
Frontier Life
Neil Goodman, 2005
"You can find the whole of my early life in
a single line of Gray's Elegy: "The short and
simple annals of the poor.""
Thomas Lincoln moves his family to a heavily forested
area of Spencer County, Indiana in the autumn of 1816.
Although only seven years old, young Abraham was given
an ax to help clear the land and build the family's new log
cabin home. As a young man, chopping wood was an
activity that consumed his days when he was not plowing
or harvesting the family farm. The Lincolns moved outside
Decatur, Illinois in 1830 and, once again, Lincoln helped
build the family log cabin and hewed miles of rails to fence
their 10-acre farm. The image of a young Abraham Lincoln
as a rail-splitter has become an iconic depiction of the
future president.