Description:

Abraham Lincoln
Springfield, IL, February 8, 1859
Abraham Lincoln Pays Taxes on Lots in Springfield for His Wife's Aunt
Partially printed DS

[ABRAHAM LINCOLN.] Joseph B. Perkins, Partially Printed Document Signed, Receipt for Taxes for 1858 on Three Lots, February 8, 1859, Springfield, IL. 1 p., 7.5" x 6.375". Expected folds; soiling along left edge.

Abraham Lincoln paid the 1858 state and county taxes of $1.47 on three town lots owned by Maria L. Bullock that she had sold to William S. Viney. When Viney failed to pay the second of two promissory notes for the purchase of the lots, Lincoln began a lawsuit on behalf of Bullock, who was Mary Lincoln's aunt, to recover the lots. Part of the final decree included the taxes that Bullock had paid on the lots.

Excerpt
"Received of A Lincoln one and 47/100 Dollars, in full for State and County Tax, on the following described Real Estate and personal property, in the city of Springfield, for the year 1858, as follows...."

Historical Background
In 1831 and 1832, physician John Todd, the uncle of Mary Todd Lincoln, gave his unmarried sister Maria Todd an African American indentured servant and her two children, some livestock, household furnishings, a tract of land near downtown Springfield, Illinois, and 35 acres of land near Springfield. Three years later, she married widower Waller Bullock. After he died in 1853, she decided to sell her real estate in Springfield and called on her niece's husband, Abraham Lincoln, to aid her in the process. Acting as her agent, Lincoln sold her Springfield land, divided into 28 lots, to several individuals, some of whom paid for the land with promissory notes. Her agent in Kentucky was Charles D. Carr, a cousin of Mary Lincoln, and Abraham Lincoln and Carr corresponded about the collection of these promissory notes.

When William S. Viney of Henry County, Iowa, failed to pay his promissory notes and taxes for the three lots he had purchased from Bullock in 1855, Lincoln sued him in the Sangamon County Circuit Court in the spring of 1859. After Lincoln had the necessary public notices printed in the newspaper, the court ordered the foreclosure, and when Viney failed to pay the judgment, the court sold the three lots back to Bullock.

In April 1860, one month before he became the Republican nominee for President of the United States, Lincoln sent $503.13 to Bullock for payments and interest he had collected from John Cook for four lots in Springfield that he had purchased from Bullock in 1855. By this time, Lincoln had successfully sold all of Bullock's Springfield real estate except the three lots involved in this case. Bullock owned that property until her death in November 1861.

Maria Logan Todd Bullock (1788-1861) was born in Kentucky and was the older sister of Robert S. Todd, Mary Todd's father. When Mary Todd's mother died in 1825, Maria Todd joined her brother's household to help the family. In 1835, she married Waller Bullock, and the couple lived in Lexington, Kentucky. He died in 1853, and by 1860, she owned four enslaved people. In the late 1850s, Abraham Lincoln aided Bullock with the management of real estate she owned in Springfield, Illinois.

Provenance:
Louise Taper, Beverly Hills, California
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Foundation

Reference: Daniel W. Stowell et al., eds., The Papers of Abraham Lincoln: Legal Documents and Cases, 4 vols. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008), 4:113-136.

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  • Dimensions: 7.5" x 6.375"
  • Medium: Partially printed DS

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