Well the legal is simple - go to the nw 1/4 of section 4 and then divide that again into the nw  1/4 of that section and that is the piece of property.  Sometimes this is a partition of the original property owned by someone who retains a portion of the property but divides it from there to another person.  A person could have originally been deeded the nw 1/4 of section 4 and then they sold off their nw 1/4 of that section.  This is almost always out in rural areas and if you do as much work for surveyors that I do this is very common.  I am given projects that require research of 40-50 tracts of land - all metes and bounds and I have to produce not only the ownership deeds, but easement, rights of way and retrictions - many times there are lost deeds when you have large projects like this - like the log cabin here in Dallas TX - I did the research project on that - to move it to put in an underground parking - well the county managed to deed the log cabin to the city but somehow forgot to first take the CC-Judgment from the commissioner's court and file it with the clerk's office so as far as anyone knew the cabin was sitting city on no man's land property.  Simple solution - I walked over to the commissioner's court and found they condemned it and took possession of the property.  Then had to notify the county they forgot to file the cc-judgment (condemnation from commissioner's court) with the county clerk - that is actually how they received the property.  It wasn't actually that simple - I went to the vault first - that is where all originals are stored and went through massive files with everyone trying to locate before I got the brainwave to go to the commissioner's court.  Now that is research!  And that is what I enjoy.  BTW - no I don't hav to have these projects back in 8 hours lol - I do title searches first!