About

Duties of Assessor & Staff

County assessors are usually elected officials, and they are responsible for determining the amount of property taxes a property owner will pay on an annual basis. To do this, county assessors analyze the characteristics and conditions of different properties and review property sales and price trends.

These professionals are often part of a team of elected assessors, although this could vary depending on the size of the county for which they are employed.

County assessors are responsible for reporting taxable values to the public and to government officials, in addition to defending the property values they’ve determined.

History

Lincoln County dates its “beginning” from the Land Run of September 22, 1891, which opened to public settlement three Indian reservations adjoining the former Unassigned Lands on the east, and was named in honor of Abraham Lincoln. See a brief history of the county and biography of George Chandler, for whom the county seat was named, for more information.
Chandler, the county seat, is on old Route 66 and nearly midway between Tulsa to the East, and Oklahoma City, to the West.

The United States purchased the large tract of land known as the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803. Washington Irving, Charles J. Latrobe, and Count Albert de Pourtalès accompanied Henry L. Ellsworth and others on an expedition in Indian Territory that may have passed through the far northwestern corner of the future Lincoln County.

The Osage hunted on land that includes present-day Lincoln County until they ceded the area in an 1825 treaty to the federal government. The government then assigned the land to the Creek and the Seminoles after they were removed from the southeastern United States. Following Quapaw removal in 1834, several small groups of Quapaw dispersed throughout Indian Territory. There were absentee groups of Quapaw living along the Red River and in Creek, Choctaw and Cherokee territory. There is a “Quapaw Creek” in the southern half of Lincoln County which was a village site for one of these absentee groups of Quapaw. After the Civil War in 1866, the Creek and Seminoles were forced to give up lands that included present-day Lincoln County in Reconstruction Treaties for siding with the Confederacy.

The federal government then used the area to resettle the Sac and Fox, Potawatomi, Kickapoo and Ioway tribes. Established in 1870, the Sac and Fox agency, established on the eastern edge of the present-day county, was the first settlement in the area.

In 1890, the Jerome Commission negotiated with the tribes of the area such that they agreed to allotment of their reservation lands, except for the Kickapoo. Indian lands were allotted to individual tribal members and the excess were opened to white settlement in the Land Run of 1891. A separate land run was held later that year for the townsite of the predesignated county seat, Chandler. Lincoln County was organized and designated as County A. In 1895, the Kickapoo agreed to allotment and the land was claimed by settlers during the Land Run of 1895.

The voters chose the name Lincoln County for County A in honor of President Abraham Lincoln, selecting it over the names Sac and Fox and Springer.