Austin Gollaher

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/5674150/benjamin-austin-gollaher

https://www.nps.gov/abli/planyourvisit/boyhood-home.htm

The boy who saved Abraham Lincoln from drowning. - https://rogerjnorton.com/Lincoln57.html

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"My earliest recollection is of the Knob Creek place." So wrote Abraham Lincoln on June 4, 1860, to Samuel Haycraft of Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Haycraft had invited the future President to visit his childhood home in Kentucky. The Lincoln family lived on 30 acres of the 228 acre Knob Creek Farm from the time Abraham was two and a half until he was almost eight years old. Here he learned to talk and soon grew big enough to run errands, such as carrying water and gathering wood for the fires. Abraham recalled in later years numerous memories of his childhood here; a stone house he had passed while taking corn to Hodgen's Mill; a certain big tree that had attracted his boyish fancy; the old homestead; the clear stream where he fished, Knob Creek, and the surrounding hills where he picked berries were all impressed on his mind.

Benjamin "Austin" Gollaher was the childhood friend of Abraham Lincoln. There is a famous story of Austin saving the life of young Abe. The boys had been admonished by their parents not to play near the river, the river being Knob Creek. Knob Creek is the stream that runs adjacent to the farm property in LaRue County, Kentucky, where Thomas Lincoln and his family lived between the years 1811 and 1816. This would have been ages 2 through 7 for Abe. Abe and Austin, ignoring their parents' warning, decided to cross the river using a fallen tree. Austin crossed the raging waters successfully but Abe did not and he slipped from the fallen tree and fell into the rushing waters of the creek. Neither boy knew how to swim, so the only way Austin was able to rescue Abe was to use a tree branch he found on the river bank and held it out of Abe. Austin was able to pull Abe to shore, saving him from surely drowning. After hanging his clothes on some small trees to dry, the two boys once again made their way back across the stream via that same fallen tree. Austin probably kept that tree branch in hand. This time both made it back across the stream and neither told their parents of their close call with tragedy.

This story is commemorated on a plaque on the Boyhood Home Of Lincoln National HIstorical