Indeed, a young Lincoln had garnered quite a reputation in his hometown of New Salem, Illinois for grappling beginning in his early 20s. One particular match against local bully Jack Armstrong, for instance, turned him into a hometown hero. At the time, Lincoln was little more than a general store employee in a town that was practically a frontier village. While Lincoln was an autodidact who focused on reading as much as he could about both history and law, shopkeeper Denton Offutt thought Lincoln's height more impressive and boasted about it to the customers.