Source of Title Forums: Re: Oil, Gas and Mineral Abstracting

Hello, Jeanne,

Thanks for posting about this topic. I wanted to take the occasion to respond to your inquiry about the indices. In Pennsylvania, the information is usually indexed in the regular Grantor-Grantee indices, but the location of the records does vary from county to county. For example, in most jurisdictions, Sheriff’s Deeds and Treasurer’s Deeds can be found in the Recorder of Deeds’ office, while in others, such instruments are kept in the Office of the Prothonotary (Pennsylvania’s clerk of the civil court).

It does help to be familiar with how the records were organized and what they were called during a given period of time, because as times change, so do the names and headings of the indices. In Clearfield County, oil & gas leases were recorded separately in the Miscellaneous Books from the 1800s up to about the mid-1980s, after which they were included in the general Deed and Record index. Watch for names such as “Lease Docket”, “Agreement Book”, etc. Road & Bridge Dockets can be sometimes useful for determining the location of abandoned rights-of-way. As an interesting sidenote, I’ve run into indices from the late 19^th & early 20^th centuries with such headings as, “Drunkards & Lunaticks” and “Feeble-Minded Persons”.

A challenge I’ve run into in the county where I’m working now is incomplete probate records. The office has a complete microfilm record of the proceedings for both testate and intestate estates, but for some reason, the Wills for the testate files were never scanned. I found myself having to pay a visit to the local Historical Society to obtain copies of Wills that I needed for a due diligence title I was working on. Why this county saw fit to just give those books away without first copying them to microfilm is beyond me.

I haven’t found much out there specific to oil & gas, but I recently found a great book online at Google Books entitled “A Practical Treatise on Abstracts and Examinations of Title to Real Property”. I have the fourth edition from the 1920s and it’s a bit cumbersome at first until you get accustomed to the author’s style (did people really talk like that back then?) but overall is well-written and rich in detail. There’s also “The Abstractor’s Bible: A Complete System for Searching A Real Estate Title and Analyzing Court House Real Estate Records” by William F. Hoffmeyer, a York County real estate attorney and nationally recognized expert on conveyancing. Again, it’s not oil & gas-specific, but nevertheless an informative and useful volume if you’re looking for a good reference book for researching titles in Pennsylvania.

Hope this helps, Jeanne.

Regards,
Scott Perry

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