Photo Credit: Jason Verschoor
History of Oklahoma Abstract Company
Early History
The Oklahoma Territory opened for settlement in 1901 with the allotment of lands for towns and homesteads. A tent city grew up overnight, and a great deal of buying and selling of land followed. Landowners needed a means to prove ownership of their land, and abstract companies–the Moncrief-Cook Abstract Company among them– put up tents and went to business to fill this need.
Walter Jordan came to Lawton and bought the Moncrief-Cook Abstract Company in 1914. In 1917, Harry T. Miller, an attorney, had come to Lawton to practice law. He bought the Cassin Abstract Company books, and he and Walter Jordan went into business together as Guaranty Abstract Company. Miller later acquired Jordan’s interest in Guaranty Abstract Company, and thereby became the sole owner of the company he renamed Oklahoma Abstract Company.
Harry Miller later bought the records compiled by the T. H. Bixby Abstract Company. Because of these purchases, Harry Miller and his Oklahoma Abstract Company came to own a complete set of indexes, as required by law, and an abstracted take-off of every real estate instrument filed with the Comanche County clerk since 1901. Thus, an abstract could be prepared without going to the courthouse, except to check the tax rolls and the court records.
On November 1, 1946, Charles E. Bledsoe and T. D. Nicklas, attorneys, purchased the Oklahoma Abstract Company from Harry T. Miller.
Oklahoma Abstract Company added title insurance when the demand arose, and in 1986 added closing (escrow) services for real estate sales and refinancing transactions.
Current Ownership and Management
The Bledsoes and Nicklas’s each had three children which gave rise to six ownership units: Chad Bledsoe and wife Dianne, Jon Bledsoe and wife Hergart, the late Judy (Bledsoe) Moses, now represented by her surviving spouse, Col. George Moses (ret.), Lyntha (Nicklas) Wesner with husband Charles, Dale Nicklas, and Polly (Nicklas) Urquhart with husband Doug. These children have been active in the management of the company since the mid-1970s, and now constitute the board of directors. All but two of the board members have been employed in the daily operations of the company at one time or another. Currently, Dale Nicklas manages the company.
We began to overhaul our company in 2000. Since that time our staff
has grown from sixteen employees to over twenty five. We have adopted
state-of-the-art closing, escrow and title insurance service technology,
and the most highly rated title plant software, which permits us to
provide same-day or one-day service on most abstract orders.