The family took two weeks in 1816 to move to Spencer County in southern Indiana, settling at the Little Pigeon Creek Community. Lincoln was a talented carpenter who owned better carpentry tools than the average settler. He could build cabins in as little as four days, and was able to have their new home built before the winter began. The next year he built up the homestead, cleared land of trees and rocks before plowing, and planted crops. In early September 1818, some residents started coming down with milk sickness. It was caused by the settlers' consuming dairy products or meat of cows that ate the white snakeroot plant, which had the toxin temetrol. Cows often roamed in woods and underbrush, where the white snakeroot grew. Most of those in Little Pigeon Creek with milk sickness became deathly ill, including Abraham's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln. She succumbed and died on October 5, 1818. She was buried in a gravesite behind the family cabin next to the Lincolns' closest neighbor, Nancy Rusher Brooner. Brooner had also been ill with milk sickness, was nursed by Nancy Lincoln, and died two weeks before on September 18. Nancy's maternal aunt and uncle, Elizabeth and Thomas Sparrow, with whom she had grown up, also died of the illness and were buried nearby, at what became known as Pioneer Cemetery. A minister could not reach the frontier settlement until the following spring, when he conducted a funeral service for all of the dead.