Abstracts tell history

For those who own their home, you know that when you purchased it you had to get title insurance to ensure your deed was free and clear and that no one else had any rights to any part of the property. In years past, this was done using an Abstract of Title for each property.

Abstracts are really wonderful documents. Physically, they are printed on several sheets of legal sized paper, bound together at the top. Starting on the bottom page, it will list every owner of your parcel of land. For the Grand Ledge area, Abstracts should all begin about 1836 when the first land was purchased by speculators from the Federal Government.

The Abstract will then trace every legal event of the property through out its history. It will list every owner, property descriptions, easements etc. It will often include details from wills and how heirs divided and inherited property.

The document does not trace homes or other buildings on the property. It can not tell you when your house was built. But sometimes you get clues. Older entries will include the purchase price and if you see a sudden jump in the price of a property, it is likely to include a home. This does not always work however, in later years they would tend to list the price as “$1 and other valuable property” so you really never know how much the lot cost.

In addition to the property history, Abstracts are valuable in other ways. They are great sources of information for genealogical research. They often detail family members and relationships. They can also shed light on other historical points. For instance I have seen an Abstract that had an old property description that included “in a line running past the old abandoned Ash Kiln.”; thus giving us more clues to our area history.

In spite of their historical usefulness, Abstracts are no longer used in real estate. Title Insurance has replaced them. Sadly many people simply toss them out in spite of the wealth of information they hold. If anyone has an Abstract to their property, I would encourage them to donate it to the Historical Society to put in their archives. If you do not want to part with it, the Society would be happy to make a copy for them to keep. Such a wealth of information can be gathered from these old documents.