Education and Inspiration through the ancient art of storytelling!
By Gary A. Panetta, Peoria Journal Star, September 10, 2006
If it weren’t for a boy named Austin Gullaher, the whole course of American history would have been very different.
“Lincoln Tales Tall and True” stars Brian “Fox” Ellis as Austin Gullaher, who saved Lincoln from drowning when the future president was only 7 years old.
Although Lincoln was born in a log cabin near Hodgenville, KY, he once wrote in a letter that his earliest memories began a few miles away at a 230 acre farm near Knob Creek. One day Abe and Austin were playing near the creek when Abe decided to cross it on a narrow fallen log.
“I went first and reached the other side all right,” Gullaher recalled years later. “Abe went about halfway across, when he got scared and began trembling. I hollered to him, “Don’t look down, nor up, nor sideways, but look right at me and hold on tight!” But he fell off into the creek, and, as the water was about seven or eight feet deep, I could not swim, and neither could Abe. I knew it would do no good for me to go in after him.”
So Austin held out a stick and pulled the boy to the shore. Abe recovered, and the two swore never to tell anyone about the incident. Gullaher kept his word until after Lincoln’s assassination.
“I felt (that the story) was the perfect bridge for the audience – for me to be the bridge to connect the audience with Lincoln,” Ellis said. “My next line is, and when you save a man’s life, you take a special interest in that man’s life. So I spent the rest of my life collecting stories about Lincoln.”
And Ellis, who works at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, has collected quite a few stories. Many are based on incidents that took place in central Illinois along the so-called Lincoln law circuit, which embraced communities such as Springfield, Danville, Metamora and Pontiac.
“He’s the only lawyer I know who won both sides of the same case,” Ellis said. Once, Lincoln was defending a man who had called another a hog thief. “Of course my client accused you of being a hog thief,” Lincoln said, “Because you are a hog thief!”
The “hog thief” not only lost his slander case but also wound up in jail for theft. Because he was too poor to pay, an attorney was appointed for him – none other than Lincoln himself.
“Lincoln then turned right around and convinced a Macon County jury that he did not steal those hogs,” Ellis said.
Another story took place years later during the Civil War, when a worried Lincoln sometimes passed the poet Walt Whitman on the streets of Washington, D.C.
“Whitman would be up all night tending to a dying soldier and then at dawn would take a long walk to gather his thoughts, “ Ellis said. “Lincoln was often up early to go horseback riding to gather his thoughts before he went to the White House. So the two of them passed each other wordlessly several times. Whitman said that he would look into the eyes of Lincoln and see the same grief that Whitman felt, having just nursed a dying soldier. It was at that moment that Lincoln came down off the pedestal and became a real man for Whitman.”
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