Harris County: Royalty Owners Service, c.1940
Title: Harris County. General Land Office February 1940. Austin, Texas Februrary 1940 Author: Royalty Owners Service & General Land Office Date: c.1940 Condition: Excellent - Blue line print map with age-related wear Inches: 20 x 16 1/8 [Paper] Centimeters: 50.80 x 40.95 [Paper] Product ID: 308745 This is a reduced copy of the General Land Office map of Harris County, Texas, dated February c.1940 and published in Austin, showing the county’s survey grid, individual land tracts with ownership or survey names, and key boundary relationships with adjacent counties including Montgomery, Waller, Fort Bend, Brazoria, Galveston, Liberty, and Chambers; it was produced for the “Small Maps of Texas Counties” series by Royalty Owners Service of Fort Worth, and illustrates not only the intricate pattern of rural land subdivision but also the course of the San Jacinto River and Galveston Bay at the county’s eastern edge, making it a useful historical document for tracing early property lines, mineral and royalty interests, and the development of greater Houston in the mid‑20th century. Background on Royalty Owners Service Royalty Owners Service of Fort Worth, Texas appears to have been a mid‑20th‑century commercial firm that specialized in compiling and selling reduced copies of the Texas General Land Office’s official county maps, aimed primarily at land, mineral, and royalty owners who needed convenient reference tools for survey boundaries and property descriptions. The Texas General Land Office notes that a large “Texas County Maps Volume” was compiled by Royalty Owners Service and bound for a private client, containing alphabetically arranged, scaled‑down county maps taken from the GLO’s cadastral series, which indicates the company worked closely with official land records but repackaged them in more portable, user‑friendly formats for private use. Rarity OCLC shows no holdings of this map. Apparently unrecorded. References in genealogical and land‑records guides show their “Small Maps of Texas Counties” were widely distributed—copies survive today in county collections and the FamilySearch Library—suggesting that Royalty Owners Service played a niche but notable role in making detailed survey and ownership information accessible to individual landholders, researchers, and royalty investors across Texas.
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