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Losing
a home is cruel thing, but life can be cruel - even to those
destined for greatness.
Abraham
Lincoln was born in a meager, one-room cabin on the Big South
Fork of Nolin's Creek near Hodgenville, Kentucky. It had
a dirt floor, one window and stick-clay chimney. Lincoln's
father, Tom, had paid $200 for the cabin and 300 acres of
discouraging land. It wasn't much, but it was home
and the young family's only chance for a decent life.
After
four years of fighting mosquitoes, heat and hardscrabble
land, the Lincolns had to pack up and leave. There was a
defect in the title. They didn't have the right sort
of papers and somebody else had a better claim to the land. With
three-year-old Abe in his mother's arms, the family moved
eight miles away to Knob creek.
In
less than four years, Tom Lincoln had to go to court to prove
his ownership rights to this second farm. Another claimant
to the land sued him as a "trespasser." Tom
Lincoln won the suit, but was haunted by the fear that he
might someday
lose another property. There was enough talk of land-titles,
landowners, land-lords, land-laws, land-lawyers and land-sharks
to make him unsure of his title. After all, Daniel Boone,
the first pioneer of the Kentucky wilderness, had lost every
inch of his once vast landholdings because he had "the wrong
kind of papers." Tom decided to move his family
to Indiana where there was rich, black land - government
land with clear title and the right kind of papers. Thus,
Abraham Lincoln lost a second home to title problems.
It
was the anxiety and outright losses of the Lincolns and other
hard-working Americans that gave rise to today's title insurance
industry. The first land title insurance company was
founded in Philadelphia in 1876. Just a few years later,
in 1889, the firm that was to become First American Title
Insurance Company was established to protect buyers against
the hidden hazards of real estate ownership: forgeries; faulty
surveys; hidden liens; conveyances by a minor or mentally
incompetent person; the false representation of a married
person as being single; and many other title defects. Even
the most complete search of records may not reveal them all.
Today,
title insurance is just as important as ever. The same potential
flaws in title exist. A home is still the largest purchase
most of us make in our lifetime. And, with escalating
land values, the loss of property can still bring a family
to ruin.
The
unfortunate loss of the Lincoln family would have been covered
by insurance had Thomas Lincoln owned a title policy. Let
us help you avoid title problems.
(Story
compliments of First American Title Insurance Buyer & Seller
Informational Brochure)
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