The caption notes, "Down in Kentucky, in a distant, secluded district of the rolling foothills, there stands a rude, primitive log cabin. It is a desolate little building, almost a hovel; and yet it is one of the greatest buildings in the world.
"In Washington, fronting a wide, placid pool of water, rises a building which is everything the log cabin is not. It is spacious, stately, beautiful, built of marble to endure for centuries. And it was raised to honor the memory of the man who born in the squalid cabin.
"The log cabin was Abraham Lincoln's birthplace; the building at Washington is the Lincoln Memorial most beautiful of all the capital's monuments."
The cabin in which Lincoln was born is the subject of many postcards. The earliest show the cabin outdoors; later versions show it indoors at its location in the Memorial Building at the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park in Hodgenville, Kentucky.
Here's an ample sample of postcards depicting the cabin. They're not necessarily in order; a few include the postmarked date found on eBay samples or close equivalents.
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| 1941 |
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| 1942 |
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| 1945 |
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| 1956 & 1958 |
It's odd how the proportions of the cabin (or the angle at which it was photographed) changed in the more recent photos.
Later research revealed that the cabin is not really the actual birth cabin but a reconstruction of sorts. But the "Symbolic Birth Cabin" accurately depicts the kind of structure that the Great Emancipator was born in.
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