Nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln's mother Nancy died in 1818. A year later his father Thomas Lincoln traveled from the family's cabin in southern Indiana to their former home in Kentucky, where he married Sarah Bush Johnston. Sarah became a stepmother to the young Lincoln and his sister. Sarah encouraged Abraham's attempts to educate himself, although she could not read or write herself. While the adult Abraham Lincoln did not maintain a close relationship with his father, he continued to cherish his stepmother and remembered her fondly.