I've been doing searches like these in West Virginia the past two years for oil & gas clients (and before that in New York and Pennsylvania).  Every other title I work on seems to be a 60 to 80 year heirship search, because of course in West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania everyone reserved their oil & gas rights around 1900, depending on the county. The amount of oil & gas owners and parties with leasing rights/royalty rights can be from a couple to over fifty. Add to that some of these rural counties don't seem to have a hospital, so the death gets reported in some other county and never gets cleared in the county they have interests in; like Scott said, one heir of many just keeps paying the taxes.

     I love running title searches for oil & gas rights in West Virginia.  It is very challenging.  There is always something new to learn and discover when searching the chain of title as far back as possible and 'running foward' the owners of the severed oil & gas rights.  It is always interesting because finding these owners is not always the same process, and every county has their own quirks with their older records. 

     I've done some work for real estate transactions, as well as gotten to know some of the local abstractors/searchers.  I found it to be a much more simple process that takes a few hours to complete a search as opposed to a week on average in West Virginia oil & gas title searches.  The problem is the sporadic work of the oil & gas clients, as well as some of the 'abstractors' they hire with no experience.  I would much rather have a more permanent job doing 20 - 40 searches with people that more experience.

Eric Mattson