Insights
The Property Insight Newsletter
Volume 10 Number 4 Summer 2012
Custodians of Chicago’s fiery past
Our Chicago heritage
Formed out of the local plant operations of
Chicago Title, Property Insight manages
automated title plants and historical records for
Cook and the six Collar Counties, along with
DeKalb and Kendall Counties, and Lake, LaPorte
and Porter Counties in Indiana. The company
offers similar services in 15 states.
Property Insight's search technology produces
reports that include title chains, property taxes
and assessments; historical records, including
deeds and liens that link to images of recorded
documents; filed and recorded judgments, and
maps that define property boundaries.
Property Insight also manages historical
records that pre-date electronic title plants.
Xpress Services offers property
reports on demand
Xpress Services is our new Web portal that
offers property ownership, vesting, lien and
encumbrance and property history reports,
complete with document images, for eight
Chicago Metro counties.
Visit propertyinsight.biz/xpressservices
A
mong the most precious information assets managed by Property Insight are the real estate records for Greater Chicago, which includes
the only official public records for Cook County prior to 1871.
Called the Ante Fire Tract Books, these records provide the only
evidence of land ownership following the destruction of the Cook
County Courthouse in the Great Chicago Fire. The Burnt Records Act, passed by
the Illinois State Legislature in 1872, made these records admissible as evidence of title in all courts of record.
Those records today are part of the vast trove of title information that enables Property Insight customers to conduct their business with assurance that
their data has the greatest possible breadth and depth. They remain accessible
for title research in Property Insight's downtown office on La Salle.
The Ante Fire Tract Books have proved their worth to historians such as amateur sleuth and title company counsel Richard F. Bales, who sifted through
1871 property information and studied transcripts of an inquiry into the cause
of the fire to produce a book, “The Great Chicago Fire and the Myth of Mrs.
O’Leary’s Cow.”
Contrary to popular mythology that began with fiction-laced newspaper
accounts, Bales found, the fire was ignited neither by Mrs. O’Leary nor a lantern-kicking cow. He believes the fire may have been started in the O’Leary
barn by Daniel “Peg Leg” Sullivan while trying to steal milk. But his findings
have not satisfied everyone. Another theory blames the fire on boys who sat on
a haystack smoking pipes. It has even been suggested that the fire was caused
by methane gas spewed across the area by a meteor shower.
For more about the history of real estate records recovered following the
Great Chicago File, visit propertyinsight.biz/fire
TitlePoint comes to Chicago
TitlePoint®, Property Insight's flagship search
application, is now available in Chicago. It
features advanced search technology, an
integrated document image viewer and
automated order date-down and management
features in a Web browser-based application.
Visit propertyinsight.biz/titlepoint
Contact us
Call: 877.747.2537 or e-mail us at
[email protected]
Property Insight and TitlePoint are registered trademarks of Property
Insight, LLC in the United States.
An Ante-Fire Tract Book detailing the exchange and subdivision of land in
Chicago’s Lincoln Park area, circa 1840.