Spanish Land Grants of Florida

Zephaniah and Anna Kingsley

Grant for a tract of land on the St. Johns River

Zephaniah and Anna Kingsley owned a great deal of land in Northeast Florida, including Fort George Island (their primary plantation, which today is both a Florida State Park and a National Historic Site) at the mouth of the St. Johns River, Laurel Grove Plantation (in modern-day Orange Park, Florida), Mandarin Plantation (Anna’s plantation in Jacksonville), the Ashley and San Jose plantations (both in south Jacksonville), and White Oak Plantation (on the St. Mary’s River).

For more about the Kingsleys, see Papers concerning the will of Zephaniah Kingsley, 1844, 1846.

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.

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.

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