a September 1865 interview with William Herndon, Lincoln's stepmother described Abraham as a studious boy who read constantly, listened intently to others and had a deep interest in learning. Lincoln continued reading as a means of self improvement as an adult, studying English grammar in his early twenties and mastering Euclid after he became a member of Congress. Dennis Hanks, a cousin of Lincoln's mother, Nancy, claimed he gave Lincoln "his first lesson in spelling—reading and writing" and boasted, "I taught Abe to write with a buzzards quill which I killed with a rifle and having made a pen—put Abes hand in mind [sic] and moving his fingers by my hand to give him the idea of how to write." Hanks, who was ten years older than Lincoln and "only marginally literate", may have helped Lincoln with his studies when he was very young, but Lincoln soon advanced beyond Hanks's abilities as a teacher. Abraham, aged six, and his sister Sarah began their education in Kentucky, where they attended a subscription school about two miles north of their home on Knob Creek. Classes were held only a few months during the year. In December 1816, when they arrived in Indiana, there were no schools in the area, so Abraham and his sister continued their studies at home until the first school at Little Pigeon Creek was established around 1819, "about a mile and a quarter south of the Lincoln farm." In the 1820s, educational opportunities for pioneer children, including Lincoln, were meager. The parents of school-aged children paid for the community's schools and its instructors. During Indiana's pioneer era, Lincoln's limited formal schooling was not unusual. Lincoln was taught by itinerant teachers at blab schools, which were schools for younger students, and paid by the students' parents. Because school resources were scarce, much of a child's education was informal and took place outside the confines of a classroom. Family, neighbors and schoolmates of Lincoln's youth recalled that he was an avid reader. Lincoln read Aesop's Fables, the Bible, The Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, and Parson Weems's The Life of Washington, as well as newspapers, hymnals, songbooks, math and spelling books, among others. Later studies included Shakespeare's works, poetry, and British and American history. Although Lincoln was unusually tall () and strong, he spent so much time reading that some neighbors thought he was lazy for all his "reading, scribbling, writing,