A mortgage document presented to Abraham Lincoln 16 years before his election as President has been discovered in the Recorder of Deeds Office in Tazewell County, Ill.

According to a Pekin Times report , the document is a mortgage recorded on Sept. 10, 1844, for 234 acres of farmland in the rural Illinois village of Tremont. The owners of the property in 1844, John H. and Isabella W. Morrison, presented the mortgage as collateral to Lincoln and his then-legal partner, Stephen T. Logan, as collateral until they paid off a debt of $284.94 owed the pair for legal services.

The document, which was recently uncovered, will be shown to the public for the first time on Feb. 12, Lincoln’s birthday, at the Tazewell County Recorder of Deeds Office in Pekin, Ill.