2016 Mississippi Code
Title 7 - Executive Department
Chapter 11 - Secretary of State; Land Records
§ 7-11-15. Form of records

The Secretary of State shall secure a sufficient number of suitable and well bound books for each county, so that the lands now or hereafter owned by the state may be complied therein. The books, in addition to the necessary columns on which to list all necessary information with reference to the lands owned, shall contain a column on which to number all patents or contracts issued and any other information. The order of arrangement and all other matters pertaining thereto are hereby specifically left to the discretion of the Secretary of State.

In addition to the foregoing records, the Secretary of State shall provide and cause to be kept a separate register of the several different classes of lands, with appropriate references to other records or documents for information concerning the whole class, and of each parcel, if need be. He may cause correct township maps to be prepared from the field notes of original surveys, with all errors in the location of natural objects, if any there be, corrected, which maps may be supplied to the several counties at reasonable prices; and he may, in like manner, have maps and plats lithographed and sold.

The Secretary of State shall procure a sufficient number of forms of certificates which shall be used by the chancery clerks of each of the various counties in certifying to the Secretary of State's office lands sold to the state for unpaid taxes in his county, and the Secretary of State shall provide such certificates in such form that they may be bond by him and used as a part of the permanent records of his office. The said chancery clerks shall use only such forms of certificates in certifying said lands to the Secretary of State's office, and failure to do so shall subject such chancery clerk so refusing or failing to do so, and his bondsman, to a penalty of five hundred dollars ($ 500.00), which penalty shall be collected by the Attorney General in a suit therefor filed in the name of the State of Mississippi. Such certificates, before being filed by the Secretary of State, shall be examined by the Attorney General. The Secretary of State, with the approval of the Attorney General, shall strike from such certificates all lands which, by reason of insufficient description or other cause, in the opinion of the Attorney General are not the property of the state; and the title of the state to such lands as may be thus stricken off shall be thereby relinquished.