Abstract

In Texas, the term abstract refers to an original land survey describing an area transferred from the public domain by either the Republic of Texas or the State of Texas. These surveys are recorded in the "State Abstract of Land Titles," which is maintained by the Texas General Land Office. Each survey so recorded is assigned an abstract number, which is unique within the county in which the survey falls. Because Texas has never performed a uniform statewide land survey, these original surveys called "Patent Surveys" constitute the State's Official Land Survey System. Texas, along with the original thirteen states and several others in the Southwest which were originally deeded with Spanish land grants, does not use the Public Land Survey System (also known as the Section Township Range and the Jeffersonian System). Land grants from the state of Texas to railroad companies were often patented in blocks and sections, and occasionally in units of square miles, officially considered sections. The Texas Land Survey System is often measured in Spanish Customary Units. The most important of these is the vara, which, while ambiguous in the past, was legally established to be exactly 33 and 1/3 inches long in June 1919.