About Us
Holt Title Guaranty Company is the only privately owned company in the county that does abstracting, title insurance and loan closings. Holt is one of the oldest firms in the county and one of the oldest abstract offices in the state. Abstracts are legal histories of a tract of land. They also include searches for current and past taxes, pending and current special assessments, district court judgments involving a property, as well as federal and state tax liens and bankruptcies.
Each day, our employees go to the Olmsted County Courthouse and/or to the Dodge County Courthouse to gather information such as deeds and mortgages, releases and divorce decrees that involve any piece of property in the county. Each day, every document from the previous day's business at the courthouse is put on microfilm, whether they were issued in the office of the auditor, treasurer, clerk of court, or in city hall.
Greg Russell, also the firm's President, currently owns Holt Title Guaranty Company. Russell came into the company almost by being in the right place at the right time. A Rochester native, he attended John Marshall High School, Rochester Community College and the University of Minnesota-Duluth. He then served in the Army, where he did graduate studies at the University of Tennessee. After his discharge, he attended the U of M, with intentions of entering law school. About then, his father told him the business was at the stage where another employee was needed. The two agreed to give the partnership a try in 1971, and still today, Russell remains with the firm bringing it into a third generation of ownership by the same family.
More History…
The roots of the business go back to a man referred to in news articles as Judge Barber. In 1860, Barber began keeping the books that are still used today.
In 1864, two men named Jones and Chadbourn began the business.
On January 5, 1869, T.H. Bliss became a clerk in the office of Jones & Chadbourn and continued in that capacity until December 1874, when he purchased the business.
Afterward John T. Ladu, of Los Angeles, California, became associated with him from 1877 to 1879. In the latter year, Chas. H. Bliss was taken in as a partner and remained in the business until 1886, when he died. Mr. Bliss remained sole owner of the company, which
was known as the T. H. Bliss Co., real estate, insurance, abstract and loan office,
until September, 1906, when Dennis H. Holt, a partner of the firm for over 4 years, succeeding him.
Dennis H. Holt is the grandfather of Greg Russell and the man for whom the business is today named.
Many years after Dennis H. Holt entered the abstract business, two sons-in-law became associated with the business in 1947. They were Donald E. Russell and William E. Shedd. In 1971, son Greg Russell joined the business.
