The log cabin built by Abraham Lincoln and his father on Goose Nest Prairie near Farmington, Illinois in 1831 is documented in this cabinet card, identified by printed lettering along the lower mount border and confirmed by the detailed reverse imprint. The photographer is unmarked on the front, but the card dates to the post-Civil War period when Lincoln memorial sites drew growing public interest and were actively documented and circulated as patriotic souvenirs.

The cabin is a low, double-pen log structure with notched corner construction, a wood shingle roof, a central stone chimney, and two doors and two windows visible along the front elevation. The building shows significant age and weathering, with gaps in the chinking and sagging roof sections visible. Tall grass grows around the foundation and a large tree stands at left, with open prairie stretching to the horizon at right.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) built this cabin with his father Thomas Lincoln after the family relocated to Illinois from Indiana, and it represents one of the last dwellings Lincoln inhabited before leaving his frontier upbringing to pursue law and politics. The structure was a documented Lincoln memorial site visited and photographed during the late nineteenth century as interest in Lincoln's origins grew in the decades following his assassination.

The reverse bears a full printed memorial imprint headed "Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States," including his birth and death dates, election dates, a portrait engraving, the notation identifying the cabin's construction on Goose Nest Prairie in 1831, and the full text of the Gettysburg Address dated November 19th, 1863, with a penciled catalog notation at upper left.