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Wednesday, January 23, 2008 3:15 PM CST
New owners of Lincoln farm land plan to develop it
LATESTLERNA — The new owner of Coles County farmland that once belonged to Abraham Lincoln plans to improve the property and offer the chance for people to buy what would amount to a souvenir deed for part of the land.
The Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Historical Farm also said they have hired a university history professor to write a book about the land.
Dale Parsons, general manager of the Friends organization, said its owner, Dan Arnold, has plans that include restoring a cabin that once was located on the property. There are also plans for a visitors center and a walkway with signs giving accounts of Lincoln’s history.
“We are very concerned with making sure everything is historically accurate,” Parsons said. Arnold’s main reason for buying the land was to make it a tribute to Lincoln and to prevent it from being developed inappropriately, he said.
The Rockford-based organization bought the four acres near Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site in October for $1.25 million from Ray Phipps of Springfield, whose family owned the land for several years. One acre of the land was returned to Phipps in 2002 after an appellate court overturned a judge’s ruling giving the land to Mattoon attorney L. Stanton Dotson.
The property is part of what Phipps promoted several years ago through a company called the Abraham Lincoln Land and Cattle Co. The corporation sold deeds to souvenir square-inches of one acre of the land.
Lincoln owned the land at one time because he bought it from his father, who was in need of money, though Lincoln continued to let his father farm the land as he did before the transaction.
Arnold is the owner of Ranger Enterprises in Rockford, which operates the Road Ranger chain of gas stations and convenience stores, Parsons said.
For more on this story, see the Thursday Journal Gazette and Times-Courier.
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