WPA History of the Spanish Land Grants
British Land Grants in Florida
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By the Treaty of Paris which in 1763 ended the Seven Years War, Spain
ceded to Great Britain the province of Florida. In the war with Spain
during the American Revolution, Great Britain lost West Florida to Spain
and in 1783 ceded to her both Floridas. In these twenty years of British
occupation the government made rapid progress in colonization, granting
thousands of acres of land. The treaty of 1763 and instructions to British
governors promised to Spanish subjects recognition of all authentic titles
to immovable property. To those who wished to remain in Florida the British
government offered liberty in their Catholic religion. Those who preferred
to emigrate were given eighteen months in which to dispose of their property,
provided they sold to British subjects. There was no difficulty over
the private property in St. Augustine but when Jesse Fish and John Gordon
acquired ten million acres of land to dispose of for Spanish citizens,
in addition to the property in St. Augustine, the British government
disallowed the sale. The Spanish civilian population had been too small,
the British government felt, to have acquired authentic titles to that
quantity of land. (28) These lands were later granted to British subjects.
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28. Charles L. Mowat. East Florida as a British Province, 1763-1764.
PhD thesis in University of Minnesota Library, 1939, pp. 6, 336. Emigration
was encouraged by the Spanish government which provided settlements for
its subjects in Cuba and sent a commissioner to Florida to make valuation
of property favorable to the owners, the government making up the difference
between the valuation and the price received.—Ibid., p. 24.
p. xv
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In line with their usual policy toward the Indians the British
in 1765 made a treaty with them in which a definite boundary was fixed.
By the terms of
the treaty the area south of St. Marys River and east of the St. Johns
River, together with the entire coast line, was opened to colonization.
(29)
Land in Florida was offered to settlers by the British government
under the so-called “family right,” to be granted by the
councils of East and West Florida. The head of a family could obtain
100 acres and
for each
member of the family, whether white or black, 50 acres. If a family could
cultivate more, a patent for an additional amount up to 1,000 acres would
be issued,
with other grants if conditions were fulfilled. The number of acres to be
cleared or drained each year and the number of livestock to be maintained
were specified.
Grants were laid out in parallelograms, the front measuring one-third of
the length. That the choicest locations might not be monopolized by the
few, the
length extended inland rather than along a highway, river, or creek. (30)
Quitrents of one half-penny per acre were required after the first two
years of grace.
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29. Spain never made formal treaties with the Indians, although the Law
of the Indies recognized the right of Indians to the land they occupied
and
used. When a village site or other Indian land was taken, they were compensated
with
lands elsewhere, or individual grantees purchased the Indian titles. — Eighteenth
Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1896-97. Part 2. “Indian
Land Cessions in the United States.” Complied by Charles C. Royce,
pp. 539-42. See also a discussion of the subject in G&S, VIII, 259, and
R. K. Call’s
caustic criticism of the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Mitchell
et al vs. U.S. in Ibid., pp. 256-260.
30. G&S, V, 757.
p. xvi
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Grants of 20,000 acres or more were made only by Orders of the
King in Council, to those who petitioned the Board of Trade promising
to settle
a specified
number of families upon the land within a given time. On such grants quitrent
was payable on half the acreage after five years, on the whole after ten
years.” (31)
In the decade following 1765 the Council of East Florida
made 576 grants on “family
right” totaling more than 210,000 acres, and 114 grants, totaling 1,443,
000 acres, by the King in Council. After the American Revolution began Florida
became the mecca for loyalists from the southern colonies, who were offered
land free of quitrents for ten years. (32) Among those receiving large grants
from the British government were Denys Rolle (33) and Dr. Andrew Turnbull.
The latter established at New Smyrna 1,400 Minorcans, Greeks, and Italians,
the largest initial American colony in the history of what was later the
United States. (34)
Six steps were necessary in making an English grant under “family
right”:
1. application to the register and council, the applicant stating the size
of his family and the number of slaves he posses, if any;
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31. Charles L. Mowat, “The Land Policy in British East Florida,” Agricultural
History, Vol. XIV (April 1940), p. 75.
32, Ibid., p. 77; Wilbur H. Siebert, Loyalists in East Florida, 1774-1785,
2 vols., Deland Fla., 1929, cited hereafter as Siebert, Loyalists.
33. Carita Doggett Corse, “Denys Rolle and Rollestown, A Pioneer for
Utopia,” Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. VII (Oct. 1928), pp. 115-22.
34. Carita Doggett Corse, Dr. Andrew Turnbull and the New Smyrna Colony
of Florida, Jacksonville, Fla., 1919.
p. xvii
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2. a warrant of survey, signed by the governor and addressed
to the surveyor-general, empowering him to make a survey in proportion
to the size of the petitioner’s
family;
3. a precept, signed by the surveyor-general authorizing a
deputy surveyor-general with plat of survey;
4. a fiat signed by the
attorney-general authorizing a grant to be made;
5. a grant, signed
by the governor and embodying the conditions; and
6. registration of
the grant in the register’s and auditor’s offices, with
copies of entries supplied to the treasury and commissioners for trade
and plantation in London. (35)
The Spanish population in East and West
Florida in 1763 numbered about 7,000 practically all of whom left when
the English took possession.
(36) In 1783,
when Spain regained the province, the population of East Florida alone numbered
17,000. Of those only 450 whites (37) and 200 negroes remained.
The definitive
treaty between Great Britain and Spain in 1783, following in principle
that of 1763, provided that subjects of the former should
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35. G&S, V, 757
36. Three men who were out searching for their horses when the last boat
sailed were left behind.—Wilbur H. Siebert, “Slavery and White Servitude
in East Florida, 1726 to 1776,” Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. X
(July, 1931), pp. 3-23.
37. The majority were Minorcans whom Dr. Turnbull had brought over for his
colony at New Smyrna; they were Roman Catholics and had been subjects of Spain
before Great Britain acquired the Island of Minorca.—Siebert, Loyalists,
I, 208-209.
p. xviii (view
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have eighteen months in which to sell their property, recover their
debts, and transport themselves and effects from East Florida. (38) The
time was later extended but in 1786 a royal order of the King of Spain
decreed that those who had been inhabitants of Florida under English authority
might remain and be protected in their possessions on condition
that
they take the oath of fidelity, which meant also embracing Catholicism,
and not attempt to augment their land holdings or leave the province.
All who did not accept these conditions were to depart within thirty
days. (39) The conditions were accepted by some and their land
titles were confirmed by the Spanish authorities and later by the United
States
Boards of Commissioners. Those who refused the terms left the province,
in many instances abandoning their property, as many had done in
1783, because of their inability to sell it in the time allowed them.
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38. The Definitive Treaty of Peace and Friendship Between His Britannick
Majesty and the King of Spain Signed at Versailles, the 3rd of September,
1783 (London, 1783), Article V, p. 10
39. G&S, V, 761-762.
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