in Hardin County, Kentucky. (The farm is part of the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park in present-day LaRue County, Kentucky.) Abraham was born at the farm two months later, in early February. Due to a land title dispute, the family lived at the farm only two more years before being forced to move. Thomas continued legal action in court, but lost the case in August 1816. Kentucky's survey methods, which used a system of metes and bounds to identify and describe land descriptions, proved to be unreliable when the natural features of the land changed. This issue, compounded by confusion over previous land grants and purchase agreements, caused continual legal disputes over land ownership in Kentucky. In the summer of 1811, the family relocated to Knob Creek farm, now a part of the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park, eight miles to the north. Situated in a valley of the Rolling Fork River, it had some of the best farmland in the area. Lincoln's earliest recollections of his boyhood are from this farm. In 1815 a claimant in another land dispute sought to eject the Lincoln family from the Knob Creek farm. Years later, after Lincoln became a national political figure, reporters and storytellers often exaggerated his family's poverty and the obscurity of his birth. Lincoln's family circumstances were not unusual for pioneer families at that time. Thomas Lincoln was a farmer, carpenter and landowner in the Kentucky backcountry. He had purchased the Sinking Spring Farm, which comprised 348.5 acres, in December 1808 for $200, but lost his cash investment and the improvements he had made on the farm in a legal dispute over the land title. Thomas Lincoln leased 30 acres of the 230 acre Knob Creek farm owned by George Lindsey but the family was forced to leave it after others claimed a prior title to the land. Of the 816.5 acres that Thomas held in Kentucky, he lost all but 200 acres in land title disputes. By 1816 Thomas was frustrated over the lack of security provided by Kentucky courts. He sold the remaining land he held in Kentucky in 1814, and began planning a move to Indiana, where the land survey process was more reliable and the ability for an individual to retain land titles was more secure. In 1860 Lincoln stated that the family's move to Indiana in 1816 was "partly on account of