How do you read Public Auction Foreclosure addresses (plat, lot, etc)?

[Account Closed]

So I took a trip to the courthouse today to check out the foreclosure list. Much to my surprise I see the addresses are not your standard:

Billy D Williams
555 La Tosta
blah, BL 55555

They read like this:

Lot 19 Block 1 of the estates of Clear Creek Section 1 of subdivision of 310.141 acres of land located in the Lawrence Long Survey abstract #336 in the DM Goheen Survey abstract 234 in Montgomery, TX as imposed by the map and dedication recorded in Cabinet 1Sheet 40 of the map records of Montgomery County, TX

Needless to say I'm baffled by how to figure out the real addresses here. Could someone tell me how to decipher this code so I can find the treasure of One Eyed Willie please.

Thank you so much..

[Jon Holdman]

That's a legal description. "Lot 19 Block 1 of the estates of Clear Creek Section 1 of subdivision of 310.141 acres of land located in..." designates this as a specific lot (Lot 19 Block 1) in a specific subdivision (Clear Creek Section 1 of subdivision of 310.141 acres of land located in...}. Texas, and some other states use a "survey" based way of designating land. Other status use sections. Sections are easier to understand. A section is a chunk of land about one mile by one mile. Not exactly one by one because the earth is curved. But roughly. They're grouped into six by six groups, and each one of the sections in the group gets a number. The group has two numbers "township" and "range". Township and range span across the entire country. A section is about 640 acres.

Some states, like TX, use a "survey" rather than sections. Long ago, someone started doing surveys and dividing up the land into pieces. In your particular example, that someone was "DM Goheen". They surveyed out some chunk and created abstract 234. Later, "Lawrence Long" surveyed inside the DM Goheen survey and created, amongst others, abstract 336. Some time later, someone carved "Clear Creek Section 1" out of abstract 336.

How do you translate into addresses? There's no direct translation. You have to find the "plat map". That map shows these various surveys. When you buy a property, it would be customary for you to get a map or maps showing where your lot was. If you really want to know exactly where the boundaries are, you pay a survey to mark them.

I owned a house south of Houston where the markers were still there. These were pipes driven into the corners of the lots. They had the lot lines scribed into a cap with the lot numbers.

Back in MO, you could track down a "plat book". That was a printed book, usually county by county, that had drawings of all the lots and the name of the owner. When I bought that property in TX, I somewhere tracked down similar maps. Been a long time, and predated the web. IIRC, I found them at the public library.