RR & Permian Express owns pipeline unauthorized by Patentee

General Mineral Rights Discussion
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Hi there! I am very new, and will get right to the point. I am an heir to a certified land patent issued in 1905. The land I own by right as of land patent - we have never sold - is located in Red River County known as A-1119 WA Roundtree, Owner, which was my great grandfather. The patent is issued To the Heirs of WA Roundtree for 831.3 acres

Whats very interesting to me is that I recently located the only crude oil pipeline that flows from Arkansas and other states, through my property down the center and ends in Corsicana (I believe) The crude oil company, Permian Express, LLC responded to my demand letter asking for proof of ownership that defeats my land patent, and their response was to send me an outdated, inaccurate “1946 Right of way” and Permian called it a covenant. In examining the Right of Way, there is no land description and vauge and with no details about the land description. In fact, the “1946 Right of way " Permian sent me describes the wrong land and in invalid, outdated, and fraudulent. The only “covenant” that exists and confirmed in 2023 & 2024 is between the State of Texas and issued to The Heirs of WA Roundtree. It is my understanding and confirmed by GLO no one owns the mineral rights unless the Original Recipient sold the mineral rights. In this case, The Heirs have never sold the mineral rights. So I desperately need help with advice and an oi & gas attorney willing to represent me. I have every inferior deed filed into Red River County Clerk’s office that clouded our superior titles are all invalid, outdated, and/or fraudulent, ignoring the existence of the land patent filed into the chain of title since 1905. I need help dealing with permian and my priority is to first get all the royalties we are entitled to by law flowing into a Roundtree Family Land Trust. I have every fraudulent record that seperates our superior title by confused, inaccurate, and fraudulent records entered into chain of title. I have all the evidence and it has been confirmed by GLO. My question to this wonderful forum is where to I start? Do I file a lwasuit? The County is corrupt - I would have to file in State or federal Court, but I think action on my part should be immediate considering that I was confronted by an aggressive with a very aggressive representative from Permian Express that told me his Covenant was superior to my State of Texas “covenant” certified by GLO - which is superior, and the lack by Permian to respond to my demand letter stating they only had 2 pages relating to my property was an absolute lie. Can anyone help me or walk me through how to file in a proper higher court asking them to determine who owns the mineral rights 1) an entity or person that assumed mineral rights and referenced non existing deed records held in a corrupt Red River County” or 2) The Land Patent issued and certified by Texas and never expires and unassailable and that belongs to an Original Grantee (who still has a perfect and clean Superior Title). What would be my first step after gathering all the records and chain of title that each inferior deed or mineral rights deeds all are invalid or voidable? I have every record that I need, but what do I do to get the royalties flowing into our family land trust moving forward and also collecting or filing a lawsuit so I can collect all the damages done to my family? I’m sorry for the lengthy email. I am just wanting to recover what is rightfully mine and the whole Roundtree Family and go over the head of Red River County - main reason, they have showed a bias against me personally. The Judge told me in a full court of inmates that have done horrible things that I “was not smart enough to do this” and the presiding also threatened to put me to jail for some unknown reason for contempt of court when I attempted to file a simple Trespass to Try Title, and with the evidence I prepared, The judge (or the right Judge) based on my clear and convincing evidence could have awarded me a declaratory Judgement right then and there, and also an Injunctive Relief, Damages, and Attorneys fee’s - all supported by State and federal l was. The lawsuit I filed in Red River County District Court was dismissed without predjudice, but it was a very traumatic experience for me. I am certain considering the fact that the County of Red River when doing the math and estimates typically earn an estimated $12, 250. for 50 miles of pipeline, over a decade that equals 6.125 million in property tax revenue. I will not get an unbiased hearing when the county itself should be a party to this lawsuit, but the court will refuse to grant me and my family legal rights to property and all resources that for an heir of a perm. disabled wartime veteran would enjoy all tax exemptions as long as an heir lived on the land. Can someone please advise? I think I need an oil & gas aggressive attorney that will go after Permian Express, and any other advise anyone would be so kind to offer. Thank you so much.

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Mineral owners are due oil and gas royalties for wells drilled on and producing from their land. A pipeline right-of-way or easement is granted by the surface owner, generally for a one-time payment at the time of grant (1946). The pipeline ROW will set a term - either permanent or for a termination upon cessation of use. The mineral owner cannot prevent the surface owner from granting the ROW. Neither the surface owner or the mineral owner receives royalties for the oil or gas being transported through the pipeline. I do not know what your reference to property taxes means as that is collected by the county.

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If you already filed a lawsuit and they ruled against you, why would you file another one? You state that you have “superior” title over and over again, youd have to be an experienced landman or hire an attorney to know that, but in your first attempt at a lawsuit, the court ruled against you for some reason, what was it? Not to be rude, but one of the most confusing posts Ive seen on here. Landowners dont get royalties from pipelines. Are you trying to say that you think you and your family should be getting paid yearly on the pipeline and should be paid around 6.125 million? If so, thats simply wrong and stop there.

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My question is, has your family continuously lived on the whole property for the 120 years? Assume the pipeline runs across your property, what did the family living there do when the draglines, bulldozers and pipe trucks showed up? Were the taxes always paid? Lots of land was lost during the depression for taxes. Are you and/or your family living on the property?

Pipelines are contractual with the company and the landowner. And, as stated by others above, generally are a onetime payment with perhaps a token annual amount thereafter. Pipelines also, generally speaking, are common carriers and, in,Texas, have a statutory right of eminent domain. Common carrier pipelines are those that transport oil, oil products, gas, carbon dioxide, salt brine, sand, clay, liquefied minerals or other mineral solutions.(Texas RRC).

Having your case dismissed and being threatened with contempt should be awake up call to hire a landman to run title. Review his findings, and then hire an attorney if indeed your title is clearly in your name and, if no record of a valid pipeline agreement is found.

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Hi. Thank you for that great feedback. I am very new to this, but to clarify. y post, I have not filed a lawsuit yet. I did file a Trespass to Try title in County Court a year ago, but i was unprepared and the case was dismissed without predjudice. so I can re-file again. I kind of don’t want to file in the County. It’s too bias. I don’t know what to do and would appreciate any help I can get.

Thank you.

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I am so sorry for the confusion. When I say I have superior titles, I mean I own the Land Patent and there was a lot of oil on my land for a period of time. Mineral Rights were ambiguously slipped into a voidable and unenforceable Conveyance deed in 1956. The bottom line is that I am trying to stand up for my family and the unassailable and never expiring land patent, and I don’t know what I am doing.

Thank you.

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I have been watching this thread, My suggestion would be to contact an Oil and Gas Attorney in Texas. check the upper menu on this site for an attorney in Texas. Any Oil and gas attorney can help you. I use Eric Camp in Ft Worth, mk

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A land patent from State grants title out of the State. The ownership of both the surface and minerals changes over time, including through subdivisions among family member through estates and by sales to third parties. A sale or assignment of the land will automatically include both surface and minerals unless specifically reserved by the seller assignor. If you are fighting title, it will depend on the chain of deeds or assignments over the years and the exact wording of each document. Title issues must generally be litigated in the district court for the county, but can perhaps be moved to federal court or the new business court depending on the circumstances. It is good advice to have an oil and gas title attorney review the title history, and in particular the 1956 conveyance.

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Thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time. I will look into Eric Camp. Please forgive me, I am in the process of learning what to do. Thank you very much for the referral. Dawn

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Thank you. All this information is very appreciated. Yes. As crazy as it may seem, every deed in this county chain of title is voidable. Some of which don’t include any land description - such as the 1956 Conveyance, some describe the wrong land. I get the feeling that the deed records in the county have been intentionally confused while burying the clear chain of title which is my grandfather’s land Grant and the land patent issued to his heirs. Every record past these records are all voidable for one reason or another. So considering all the pain and suffering and the tragic consequences of having this land separated from us by fraudulent deed records and county interference, I am committed to righting the wrong and my mission is more on the injustice than anything else. I am so grateful to all the feedback. Thank you so much! Dawn

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Yes. Agreed. I am not a wealthy woman, but recognize it was a mistake to show up in county court unprepared. What was crazy is that while the judge was screaming at me and telling me I wasn’t smart enough to do this, he never explained why he wanted to hold me in contempt. I asked him and was terrified by the way he was screaming at me and he told me that If I thought he was being hard on me now, just wait until “I see you again”. I did ask an attorney what could I have possibly been held in contempt for. I wasn’t disrespectful - I was terrified. The attorney said that challenging records entered into the deeds by a county official is difficult to get done in the same county that allowed fraud to enter the chain in the first place and most likely the Judge just has a bias and a transfer of jurisdiction would be better for me in the long run. But from the advice I am getting here, I think I need to go Federal. My only concern in doing that is while I have been studying case law, I have seen a lot of state court cases where it seemed that federal interference was inappropriate and harmed Texans and land owners along the northern boarder. So if justice is truly bling and I will get a fair process in Federal, then thats what I think I should do too. I just don’t want my case to impact other land owners negatively in the long run.

To answer your questions about living on the land: the short answer is my ancestor was murdered right before the land patent was issued and the patent was issued to The Heirs in 1905. GLO has authenticated that according to the state the land has always belonged to my family and the patent to the heirs and the patent is unassailable, irrevocable and never expires. GLO sent me a new certified land patent and a certificate of facts confirming that with the original deed and patent I have the Superior titles and exclusive rights. Now the county says differently. We have never been allowed to even step foot on the ground of our beautiful property and the chain has been deliberately over cluttered and confused in county records. I have had the chain of title examined by a title company and every deed that separated the legal owners “The Heirs” from our property and along with that seperated us from benefit of all the patented resources that have been plundered from our land through fraudulent records entered into the chain and creating a huge cloud. Every deed record filed in the county is either invalid, unenforceable, or fraudulently misrepresentations using misleading information, or legally to vague and ambiguous to the point of not including any land description to describing the wrong land all together which at the very least indicates to me that every party transferring and conveying the property and its resources either had to know or should have known that the chain could not connect in any way to the original owner and land patentee. The other point I wanted to share is a broader overview. If this land was occupied or homesteaded or subdivided in any way, I would leave it alone. I wouldn’t want to be someone that knocks on an elderly persons door that has lived on the land for generations and tell them they are trespassing. That would be wrong. That isn’t the case here. The land is deemed unmarketable due to all the clouds and confusion of ownership and the whole 831.3 acres has never been homesteaded. It is and always has been used to profit from the resources not enjoyed or lived on by anyone. It generates huge amounts of top grade hay, a cattle lease, a hunting lease, and through the 1920’s-1970’s produced something like 1,500 barrels of oil per day. How did an oil company legally do that without attacking the land patent? We never parted or sold either the land or the patent. There are supposed to be state and federal protections in place to protect and defend the patent. If that is the case what do I do about it and how did oil be tapped, wells (most likely), drilled, excavated, and transported off the land that violated the land patent. In this case the mineral rights were never entered into the record until oil was discovered in 1946. The mineral rights were lumped in to a very fraudulent Conveyance by Delta Oil in 1956 and just assumed by them and ignoring the patent completely. Additionally, all subsequent “Mineral Deeds” identify my land by abstract number and refer for a “more accurate description” to a previous deed that doesn’t describe the land or even mention any minerals at all. It’s all very confusing, but I have painstakingly organized in chronological order all the false deeds and mineral deeds and every one can be voided or is already not valid or enforceable. I’m not a wealthy woman. These are tips and advice I’ve been given as a courtesy by attorneys and other experts that can examine records. The whole thing just stinks to high heaven and if it’s true that we can recover the land and receive royalties for our land patent, there are about 65 heirs that are living in neglect, squaller, and lack in every way. That keeps me up at night. I have to try. What should I do if I can’t afford an expensive attorney? Thank you.

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I’ve been following this thread because it’s quite fascinating, and appalling. I see no way of successfully challenging this in court without an attorney, and a good one at that. Maybe you can have some luck and find someone who believes in your case, and would take it on with payment to come only out of a percentage of damages awarded.

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The 1905 patent is not evidence of current ownership of the tract as that changes over time. You will have to overcome the recorded deeds by proving them invalid, which will be costly. The GLO archived records for A-1119 are online. The 1905 letter to P. Doak discusses the two Roundtree surveys and seems to state that there were original conflicting grants, some superior and some inferior. The 1905 patent is for 831.3 acres which was re-surveyed in 1956 to be 708.56 acres. There is a 1919 letter from GLO Commissioner in the file responding to a letter that there was a lawsuit pending regarding title. He notes that there was possibly an unrecorded deed of one-half interest from Roundtree to P. Doak and also further states that on the back of the original certificate there are endorsements of transfer from Roundtree to W.T. Jackson with witnesses but no certificate of authorization. He seems to have thought the patent should have been in name of WA Roundtree direct (instead of Heirs), “letting the title to be vested in whomsoever really owned the land.” You should search the court records to see if there was a lawsuit and how title was ruled. The abstract company may be have those records.

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Hi. What is appalling? I am trying to recover my families legacy and exercise my rights and access as a patent holder. I would like to know if what I am doing is morally or unethically wrong? Please. Thank you for the constructive feedback.

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Thank you so much! Yes. NP Doak was hired by The Heirs to recover their patent. He swindled them. recovered the patent in the name of the heirs, but refused to give it to them. Yes. there was a court case. NP Doak, the District Attorney of Red River sued the heirs for casting a cloud over his title of all the 831.3. acres. The land patent was issued for 831.3 acres. Its very interesting the when going through the GLO records, that the commissioner voided all transfers as being “not authorized” in 1919 in favor of the heirs. Ive looked for the lawsuit, located it and copied it. I went back to the library that has the case, and the microfilm has been removed for 1919. Seperately, I have found case law and ruling from Texas Supreme Court against Delta Oil in a land and patent dispute very similar t o mine and it includes the same people in that suit as in my chain of title. Not one Grantor or Grantee has a legal deed that can’t be voided, I have been told. They all rely on a fraudulent conveyance that does not clearly describe the property and assumes mineral rights without the patent all the deeds and mineral deeds reference and are relying on previous deeds that don’t even mention any minerals or mineral rights. Not one deed has included a land description or wrong land. It’s all very sloppy and the county clerk should have never authenticated and entered any of these3 deeds into the record because they all fail to meet the requirements of what a legal instrument is, and the Conveyance deed by Delta oil, Now Nabors, is a voidable deed according to tx property code because it fails very strongly as a conveyance requirements. I’ve got the whole chain of title and it is obvious the property was taken by fraud and the County Clerk admitted deeds and instruments that should not have been allowed to enter into a chain of record with an original deed and a land patent belonging to heirs at the beginning of the chain and was never sold or parted with by the original grantee and us the heirs. These acts devastated so many lives, real people were harmed and the heirs have suffered unspeakably over time. I don’t understand why anyone would not want to fight to recover their family’s legacy and rights of ownership and have to enjoy for future generations. This land was given to a war time Veteran, and 17 more Rountree’s serviced in every single war and fought for this county and 3 died indigent, malnurished in the VA hospital while they waited on their pensions. I can’t imagine anyone not recognizing the enormity of this loss and the lives that were destroyed by unlawful entries into the county deed recoreds. It’s the clerk’s job to ensure every deed entered into it’s records is authenticated and doesn’t cloud the chain of title. Thank you so much for looking into this. That means a lot. It is very interesting for sure! I would love to continue this conversation, you advice has been very appreciated by me. Thank you.

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I just meant the idea of your family being stripped of rights is appalling, not what you are doing. Sorry for any confusion.

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Thank you. That’s very kind, Steve. I will and am doing everything I can to right this wrong. In addition to doing all this research, I have been locating Roundtree Heirs. I’ve visited and interviewed about 17 elderly Roundtree’s for an eventual book. It was so sad. The loss of land, the generations reading World news in the news papers that Oil was discovered in Red River (a stone’s throw from our land). Scarcity of food during the Depression. It’s all so very tragic. One elderly woman I found and met, doesn’t even have running water in her house. The curse of defeat and injustice has just passed generation to generation.

I will recover this land. I will believe, believe, believe and it shall be done. I am manifesting it every day. I have learned so much through this and I have prepared a very organized and comprehensive set of records and meticulously examined every record filed in Red River And With the GLO. Red River is one of the few Counties that do not report or provide many overseeing state agencies and keep everything in the County. Our land wasn’t the only parcel stolen. I have found 4 for sure and maybe 7 - all stolen by the same few people - A ponzie scheme, so to speak.

It’s a crazy story of truth. My fear in all honesty, is that even when I recover the land and recover the royalties and move them into a Roundtree Land Trust - I know by how the county operates - that i can never step foot in the county or the land. I’ve already been threated by a gatekeeper at the property and the county judge. I’ve read of all the corruption in that county and people turn up dead. There are news stories of a prominent couple loosing everything and then falsely accused and arrested for unspeakable vile acts of a very humiliating nature. They lost their business, reputations, went to jail for awhile, and run out of town. Eventually, they survived.

That county will try to stop me, and I have been warned that if I go back, I will likely be pulled over and drugs will magically appear in my car and once in jail in one of the states worst county jail systems, I will be humiliated and my spirit broken. So I have to be very careful, but I’m still going to record this land and our family’s stolen prosperity and first get the eldery and disabled into better living conditions.

I’m a little scared, but I am 5 generation Texas on 4 sides. I’m a dat gum princess :slight_smile: I will continue my work even though I am a little scared of retaliation, but as every Texan knows in their own DNA, fear does not prevent us from justice and truth :slight_smile:

I will get this one way or another. And I will do so with dignity and know I am on the Right side of things. I tell myself that and remember why I am doing this every morning. It is worth it.

I sure Thank you Steve and all of ya’ll for following my thread and this really tragic theft and loss of quality of lives. I am so grateful for all your understanding, sound advice and your experience and wisdom. I needed to find my tribe of people for support! I think I have. Thank you all and please, I continue to welcome and be so grateful for any and all feedback!! This is a really wonderful forum and group.

Thank you, Dawn Rountree

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Thank you! I contacted Mr. Camp. He is the right attorney for this! I hope he contacts me back. I am also looking for a good landman if ya’ll think I should. I have the chain of title and every single government record filed in the county that is fraudulent and I am telling ya’ll the truth. Not one record cannot be voided. I have prepared correction deeds for each deed record, but filing them in Red River County - the same county that caused the theft won’t get me anything but resistance. I think one of you is right. I may have to go federal.

Dawn

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Thank you Steve :slight_smile: I really appreciate any encouragement, advice and support and even constructive advice.

I know this is a righteous endeavor. It’s become my purpose in a lonely life.

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This is quite confusing to follow. Just to be clear, you do know that just because a distant relative received the Patent, does not mean that your whole family still owns it all, right? Id venture to guess there are a lot of conveyances over the last 100 years