Property ෴from the Co💫llection of Jay I. Kislak, Sold to Benefit the Kislak Family Foundation

Lincoln, Abraham

Autograph legal document signed ("Lincoln & Herndon for Complt"), being a bill filed in Hannah Miller v. Mary E. and Nancy A. Miller before chancery session of the Menard Circui🔯t Court

3 pages (🔯311 x 201 mm) on a bifolium of very light blue wove paper, [Petersburg], 8 October 1847, directed "To the Honorable the Judge of the Menard Circuit Court in chancery sitting," file docket on verso of second leaf; soiling, minor loss, and some small repairs at folds, internal fold separation affecting about eight words. Matted, framed, and double-glazed.  

An unusually lengthy and interesting holograph Lincoln legal brief, with more than one thousand words in Lincoln's hand. Hannah Miller was widowed on 7 March 1842 and w♓as left with six children. In order to meet debts, taxes, and other obligations, she sold several parcels of land willed to her by her late husband, George G. Miller, which were in fact entailed. Lincoln provides in the brief a table of Miller's real estate holdings: ten parcels totaling 581 acres. In the present bill filed by Lincoln & Herndon for Hannah Miller, she "states that she is informed and now believes that the sales of real estate aforesaid are invalid in law; but she charges that their confirmation would be for the best interest of all concerned, and she therefore prays that the same may be confirmed by the decree of your Honor."

As the defendants named in the bill are Hannah Miller's own children and the purchasers of the land she illegally sold, it seems likely that the court granted the bill and empowered Miller, as she requeꦕsted, "to sell so much of the unappropriated real estate aforesaid as shall be necessary for the purpose aforesaid."

PROVENANCE:

Sotheby's New York, 1♈3 June 1991, lot 221 (undesignated ꦜconsignor)