What were the Spanish Land Grants?
The Spanish Land Grants were land claims filed by settlers in Florida
after the transfer of the territory from Spain to the United States
in 1821 in order to prove land ownership. Starting in 1790, Spain offered
land grants to encourage settlement to the sparsely populated and vulnerable
Florida colony. When the United States assumed control of Florida,
it agreed to honor any valid land grants. Yet residents had to prove
that validity through documentation and testimonials. Therefore, these
records were the dossiers filed by grantees to the U.S. government.
They were either confirmed (found to be valid) or unconfirmed (found
invalid) by the US government through land commissions, federal courts,
or by the U.S. Congress. Unfortunately, most of the records for West
Florida are missing.
WPA
History of the Spanish Land Grants
(Go to the WPA History
of the Spanish Land Grants.)
The WPA’s Florida Historical Records Survey, under supervision
of the State Library Board, created and published the Spanish
Land Grants in Florida in 1942.
Written by historian Louise Biles Hill, the introduction to this
five-volume transcription and abstraction is still
useful as an extensive history of the creation, use, and preservation
of the Spanish land grants.
Until the State Library and Archives of Florida made
the Spanish land grants available online, the WPA’s publication
was the main source for researchers on the Spanish land grants and
the
Second
Spanish
Period Florida (1783-1821).
The introduction to the Spanish
Land Grants in Florida is reproduced here with scanned
images and a written transcript.
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What do the records tell us?
The grants provide information on the settlement and cultivation of
Florida during the Second Spanish Period (1783-1821) and the Territorial
Period (1821-1845). Grantees had to provide the following information:
description of land granted; date of grant; size of grant; property
boundaries; and proof of residency and cultivation. Therefore the records
contain surveys and plats, copies of royal grants, testimonials; correspondence,
deeds, wills, and translations of Spanish documents. A note of caution:
because many of the grants conflict and overlap with each other, not
all of the information in the records can be considered accurate. Some
of the surveys were not verified on the ground, nor was there a complete
survey for Florida until the late 1820s. Serious researchers should
also consult other land collections (see Related
Resources).
Resources Related to the Florida Spanish Land Grants
Copies
Digital copies of the Spanish Land Grant documents may be downloaded
from this Web site at no charge. Photographic
copies of the documents are available from the State Library and Archives of
Florida.
Checks should be payable to the Department of State, and mailed to:
The State Archives of Florida
R. A. Gray Building/MS#9
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0250.
Credit card orders can be placed by phone (850) 245-6700.
You may call (850) 245-6700 for further information on this or any
other collection in the Archives. |
