United States Statutes at Large/Volume 4/18th Congress/1st Session/Chapter 164
Chap. CLXIV.—An Act granting donations of land to certain actual settlers in the territory of Florida.[1]
The commissioners for ascertaining titles to lands in Florida authorized and required to receive and examine all claims presented to them within their respective districts.Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the commissioners for ascertaing titles and claims to lands in Florida, be, and they are hereby, authorized and required, within their respective districts, and in addition to their former duties, to receive and examine all claims that may be presented to them, and the evidence in support of each of such claims, founded on habitation and cultivation of any tract of land, town, or city lot, or out-lot, by any person, being the head of a family, and twenty-one years of age, who, on the twenty-second day of February, one thousand eight hundred and nineteen, actually inhabited and cultivated such tract of land, or actually cultivated and improved such lot, or who, on that day, cultivated any tract of land in the vicinity of any town or city, having a permanent residence in such town or city, in said territory; and to grant certificates of confirmation for any tract of land thus inhabited and cultivated, or cultivated by any person of the above description, residing in any town or city in the vicinity of the tract so cultivated; which land shall be located in an entire body, as nearly as possible, in conformity to the surveys of contiguous public lands, and so as to embrace the principal improvements then made on any tract so claimed, and shall not exceed in quantity six hundred and forty acres:Duty of said commissioners. And it shall also be the duty of said commissioners to receive claims to land founded on habitation and cultivation, commenced between the twenty-second of February, one thousand eight hundred and nineteen, and the seventeenth of July, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-one, when Florida was surrendered to the United States, and evidence in support of the same; and to report an abstract of all such claims to Congress, and of the claims by them confirmed, to the Secretary of the Treasury; and the claims merely reported on, shall be laid before Congress at their next session, with the evidence of the time, nature, and extent, of such inhabitation and cultivation, in each case, and the extent of the claim:Proviso. Provided, That no claim shall be received, confirmed, or reported, to Congress, by the said commissioners, for confirmation, in favour of any person, or the legal representatives of any person, who claims any tract of land in said territory, by virtue of any written evidence of title derived from either the British or Spanish government.
Approved, May 26, 1824.
- ↑ See notes to May 26, 1824, ch. 154.