§ 12-a. Certain patents ratified and confirmed. Patents of real property escheated to the state, granted before the sixteenth day of May, eighteen hundred and ninety-two, pursuant to resolutions of the commissioners of the land office, adopted under or in pursuance of chapter two hundred and seventy-nine of the laws of eighteen hundred and ninety, have been ratified and confirmed unto the patentees therein, their heirs and assigns.