A 30-acre plot of Central Illinois farmland once owned by Abraham Lincoln was sold at auction on the former president’s birthday.
Retired farmer Ron Best and his family sold the land for $300,000, or $10,000 an acre, according to the Journal-Gazette and Times-Courier. The plot was part of an 590-acre parcel that sold for a total of $3.9 million to an anonymous buyer, according to a representative.
Lincoln in 1841 bought 40 acres of land in the area from his cash-strapped father, Thomas Lincoln, who continued to farm it.
Best purchased his family’s 30 acres in 1989, and said he still has a copy of the original deed.
Six acres eventually became the Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site, and the remaining four acres were sold to the founder of the Road Ranger truck stop chain in 2007, the papers reported.
Best said his ancestors moved from northern Kentucky to the area about the same time Thomas Lincoln arrived.
His great-grandfather met Lincoln when he was 12, before the the future president left for Washington, Best said. [Journal-Gazette and Times-Courier] — John O’Brien