Why Abraham Lincoln Needed Title Insurance
Losing a home is a 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, on window and a 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 Lincoln’s had to pack up and leave. There was a defect in the title. They didn’t have the right sort of papers and somebody had 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, landlords, 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 a 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 frustration and anguish of such hard-working Americans that gave rise to today's title insurance industry. The first land title insurance company was founded in Philadelphia in 1876. Companies like Nations Title Agency were established to protect buyers against 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.
The loss of the Lincoln or the Boone family would have been covered by insurance had they owned a title policy or had the advice of a title company dedicated to providing them wisdom in regards to property conveyance. Today, title insurance is just as important as ever. The same potential flaws in title exist today just as they did back in the days when the pioneers of this country discovered the need to protect their family. 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. Consequently, Nations Title Agency and other such real estate property related companies, provide the reliability and stability we need to ensure the sanctity of that which we call "home".
The one-room cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky, where Abraham Lincoln was born and one of the two homes his family lost because of title problems.
