He lost his home twice... ...because of title defects.

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, one 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 family 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.

Inl ess 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 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 Lincoln family 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 Ohio National Title LLC help you avoid title problems.