Florida Colonial Records

Florida Wiki Topics

Beginning Research

Guided Research Research Strategies Record Finder

Record Types

Adoption Bible Records Biography Cemeteries Census Church Records Colonial Records Correctional Institutions Court Records Directories Divorce Records Emigration & Immigration Genealogies Land & Property Military Records Naturalization & Citizenship Newspapers Obituaries Occupation & Business Records Online Collections Periodicals Probate Records Taxation Vital Records Voter Records

Florida Background

Biography Further Reading Gazetteers History Maps Migration

Cultural Groups

African Americans Indigenous Peoples Cultural Groups Swedish American

Local Research Resources

Archives & Libraries Societies Find a family history center

Moderator

United States

U.S. Colonial Records

Florida

Colonial Records

Online Records

• 1768-1820- British & Spanish Grants, West Florida. Images only.
• 1770- A true and exact copy of the register for burials for the town of Pensacola in the province of West Florida : from the 24th day of December 1770 to the 24th day of June 1770, both days included, 1770.. Images only.
• Spanish Land Grants. Florida Memory (State Library and Archives of Florida). Index and images.

History

In 1565, Spain established the presidio of Saint Augustine, the first permanent European settlement. Saint Augustine was burned by the English in 1586, another major settlement was not established in Florida until 1698. The territory of Florida originally included Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Florida was ceded to the English in 1763 and divided into West and East Florida. Florida was returned to Spain in 1784. Some of West Florida was annexed to the territories of Louisiana and Mississippi in 1812. The remainder of Florida was ceded to the United States in 1819.

Resources

• Catalog of the Florida State Archives (Tallahassee: Department of State, 1975).
• Catalog of the P.K. Younge Library of Florida History, 4 Vols., (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1977). For a link to the library website is here.
• New Smyrna, an Eighteenth Century Greek Odyssey by E.P. Panagopoulos, (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1967).
• "The Loyalist Migration from East Florida to the Bahama Islands" by Thelma Peters, Florida Historical Society Quarterly 40:226-40.
• Eighteenth-Century Florida and the Caribbean by Samuel Proctor, (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1976).
• The Italians in Colonial Florida: A Repertory of Italian Families Settled in Florida under the Spanish and British Regimes; with a Brief Historical Outline and an Appendix on the Contemporary Colonial Press by Bruno Roselli, (Miami: n.p., 1940, film 1035661).
• A Bibliography of West Florida by James Servies, 4 Vols., (Pensacola: John C. Pace Library, 1981-).
• A History of Florida by Charlton Tebeau, (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1971).

Civil Records

Spanish Dominion

Spanish colonial government records of Florida can be found in several different locations.

• Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain: Papeles de Cuba and Papeles de Santo Domingo.
• Mitchell Library, Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge (Copies of Cuban papers).
• Tilton Library, Tulane University, New Orleans (copies of Cuban papers).
• Loyola University Library, New Orleans (copies of Santo Domingo papers).
• Pace Library, University of West Florida, Pensacola (copies of Cuban papers and Panton Leslie Papers, 1738-1853, on microfilm).
• Archivo General de Cuba in Havana.
• Saint Augustine Historical Society (copies of records from Havana).
• Mississippi State Archives in Jackson (Spanish series, Provincial Archives).
• Spanish land grant archives, 1764-1844 (film 1020288 ff.).
• The P.K. Yonge Library, University of Florida, in Gainesville.

Records for Spanish East Florida (1783-1821), are located at the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. A card index is available as well as the original records on microfilm. For more information see "The East Florida Papers in the Library of Congress," by Mabel W. Manning, in Hispanic American Historical Review X No. 3 (August 1930), 392-7.

• Colonial records of Spanish Florida : letters and reports of governors and secular persons by edited and translated by Jeannette M. Thurber Connor. (DeLand, Florida : Florida State Historical Society, 1925).
• Index to the Archives of Spanish West Florida, 1782-1810, by Stanely Clisby Arthur, (New Orleans: Polyanthos, 1975).
• The Governorship of Spanish Florida, 1700-1763 by John Jay TePaske, (Durham: Duke university Press, 1964).Spanish Florida land records, 1764-1849, United States Board of Land Commissioners. The originals of these records are at the Florida State Archives in Tallahassee.
• Colonial Records of Spanish Florida [1750-1580] by Jeanette Thurber Connor, (DeLand: Florida State Historical Society, 1925-1930).
• Spanish Plat Book of Land Records of the District of Pensacola, Province of West Florida, British and Spanish Land Grants, 1763-1821, by Billie Ford Snider, (1895, reprint, Pensacola: Antique Compiling, 1994).
• The Spanish Borderlands: A Chronicle of Old Florida and the Southwest by Herbert E. Bolton, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921).
• The Spanish Censuses of Pensacola, 1784-1820: Genealogical Guide to Spanish Pensacola by William S. Coker and Douglas Ingles, (Pensacola: Perdido Bay Press, 1980).

British Dominion

Original records of East Florida during the British period are held at the PRO in Kew, Surrey, England. Copies of the records are at the P.K. Yonge Library at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. These records include:

• East Florida Claims Commission, 1763-1789 (film 1020205 ff./T 77).
• Loyalist birth, marriage, and death records, 1755-1908 (film 0857997 ff/WO 42).
• Land grants (CO 5), American Loyalist Claims, Series II (AO 13).
• Documents relating to refugees, 1780-1856 (T 50).
• List and Index Society. List of the Records of the Treasury, Paymaster, General's Office, the Exchequer and Audit Department, and the Board of Trade to 1837, Vol. 46, (1921, reprint, New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1963). This indexes claimants in the East Florida Claims Commission (T 77)

Records for West Florida during the British period are available at the following locations: - Lelia Abercrombie Historical Library in Pensacola, Florida - Pace Library, University of West Florida, Pensacola, Florida. - Library of Congress, Washington, DC (Oliver Pollock Papers). - Mississippi State Archives (copies of PRO records).

• "A State of All Grants of Land Which Have Passed the Great Seal of the province of West Florida on Family Right and Purchase since the Arrival: Of His Excellency Governor Chester at Pensacola on the 10th Day of August, 1770 to the 4th Day of November, 1773." Mississippi Provincial Archives, 1763-1783, English Dominion 6 (Jackson: Department of Archives and History, film 0899983): 83-9.
• British West Florida, 1763-1769 by Cecil Johnson, (New haven: Yale University Press, 1943).
• The British Development of West Florida, 1763-1769 by Clinton N. Howard, (Salt Lake City, Utah : Digitized by FamilySearch International, 2015).
• East Florida as a British Province, 1763-1784 by Charles L. Mowatt, (Berkeley: university of California Press, 1943).
• English Land Grants in West Florida: A Register for the States of Alabama, Mississippi, and Parts of Florida and Louisiana, 1766-1776 by Winston De Ville, (Ville Platte, LA: The Author, 1986).
• Loyalists in East Florida, 1774 to 1785: The Most Important Documents Pertaining Thereto by Wilbur Henry Siebert, 2 Vols., (1929, reprint, Boston: Grogg Press, 1972).

Ecclesiastical Records

Catholic Records

Early Catholic parish registers and records are located at different archives and societies. Some are listed below:

• Historical Society of Saint Augustine, Florida contains early Catholic parish registers, (the originals are located at the Diocese of Havana in Havana, Cuba).
• Records of the Diocese of Louisiana and the Floridas are located at the Notre Dame Archives, Notre Dame University, South Bend, Indiana.
• Historical Society Library, Saint Augustine, Florida. Chronological document files, 1766-1930 (film 1019970 ff.).
• Guide to the Microfilm Edition of the Records of the Diocese of Louisiana and the Floridas, 1576-1803 by Thomas Timothy McAvoy, (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Archives, 1967).
• Church and State in the Spanish Floridas, 1783-1822 by Michael Joseph Curley, (New York: AMS Press, 1974, fiche 6104719).
• The Cross in the Sand: The Early Catholic Church in Florida, 1513-1870 by Michael V. Gannon, (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1965).
• Missions of Spanish Florida by David H. Thomas, (New York: Garland 1991).
• Dominicans in Early Florida by V.F. O'Daniel, (1930, reprint, Berkeley: University of California, 1992, film 1862235).
• The Spanish Missions of Florida by W.P.A Florida Writers' Project, (n.p.: The Survey 1940, film 0908063).
• Los Martires de la Florida, 1566-1572 by Ruben Vargas Ugarte, (Lima, 1940, reprint, Washington DC: The Library of Congress, 1975, film 1688882).
• British Burials and Births on the Gulf Coast: Records of the Church of England in West Florida, 1768-1770 by Winston De Ville, (Ville Platte, LA: The Author, 1986).