Abraham Lincoln quarterly. [Vol. 5, no. 3]

130 ABRAHAM LINCOLN QUARTERLY
II
Richard Creal, referred to in Rowbotham's letter to Herndon, owned and resided on land abutting the farm on which
Abraham Lincoln was born in Larue County, Kentucky.
In 1867 Creal bought eighteen and one-third acres, including
the spring, an outstanding landmark known variously as the
Rock Spring, Cave Spring, and Sinking Spring. This transfer
of the area around the spring made Creal the nineteenth person who had owned part of the Lincoln farm, and the eleventh since Thomas Lincoln.
In after years, Creal obtained ninety more acres of the
Lincoln farm by adverse possession, and the place, up to
1895, was known as the "Old Creal Place." Near the spring
is a magnificent oak which has been the starting point of almost every known survey of the Rock Spring farm.
When Alfred W. Dennett bought the Old Creal Place in
1894, a chain of events was set in motion which, within a few
years, involved a number of interesting characters. Dennett
was the inventor of the quick-lunch. In the eighties his famous place on Park Row, New York, was opened, and it was
here that William and Samuel Childs, the founders of Childs
Restaurants, received their training. Dennett was extremely
religious and was co-founder of the Florence Crittenton Mission and other important mission organizations. He helped
support them all with a wide open pocketbook. The outstanding reformers of the eighties and nineties, in the East
and on the Pacific Coast, were his close, personal friends.
Gold mining in California had his attention for a number
of years. His bankruptcy in 1901, was the genesis of protracted litigation over a fraudulent conveyance of the Lincoln
birthplace farm, and, as will be seen, the records of this
litigation provide much of our story. The conveyance was set
aside by the court at a time when Dennett was a patient in a
California mental institution in 1905.