Florida Historical Law Guide

Contents

Legal Ages at a Glance

General Principles

Spanish civil law to 1821

Before 1821 the governing law in Florida was Spanish civil law. That system descends from Roman law and the codes of Spain. It is built on written codes rather than on the decisions of judges.

The codes themselves were the Siete Partidas, compiled in the thirteenth century, together with the later royal compilations and the laws made for the Indies. An English digest of the whole was printed in 1839 by Joseph M. White, Florida's own delegate to Congress, for the American lawyers and courts then untangling Spanish land claims. It is the practical starting point for Spanish-period Florida law, and the rules given in this guide for the years before 1821 are drawn from it.¹

Spain governed to 1763. English law took over during the British administration of East and West Florida from 1763 to 1783, when the two colonies had governors, councils, and courts on the ordinary British colonial model. Spain returned from 1783 to 1821, and Spanish law with it.²

This matters to researchers chiefly for land. Titles that began as Spanish or British royal grants survived the change of sovereignty. After Spain ceded Florida in the treaty ratified in 1821, the United States set up commissions and courts to confirm those private grants. Land tracing to such a grant is documented in federal and territorial confirmation papers rather than in ordinary county deeds.

One Spanish-law rule was preserved by statute for a class of families. An act of 28 December 1824 kept the marital rights established under the civil laws of Spain for couples married before the change of government. Each spouse could sell, inherit, and convey property as they could have done under Spanish law, using the conveyance forms Florida required.³ For a couple married in Spanish Florida, the wife's property rights may therefore be wider than the common law would suggest.

English common law from 1829

English common law arrived by a single act. On 6 November 1829 the territorial Legislative Council declared the common and statute law of England in force in Florida. The declaration reached English law of a general nature down to 4 July 1776. It applied so far as that law was consistent with the United States Constitution, federal law, and Florida's own acts.⁴

Every later compilation carried that declaration forward. From 1829 Florida was a common-law state. Husband and wife held property separately under common-law rules, later changed by statute.

A few Florida statutes predate the reception act. The territory passed its own wills and descent acts in 1828 and 1829. Where no statute spoke, the common law governed. Reading Florida records after 1829, take the common-law rule as the rule unless a Florida statute had changed it.

Legal Age of Adulthood

Before 1821: majority at twenty-five

Under Spanish law a person came of age at 25, not 21. Below that the law marked two further stages: infancy, which ran to 7, and puberty, which began at 14 for a boy and 12 for a girl. A boy of 14 or a girl of 12 could marry and make a will, but neither managed their own property until 25.⁵

So an ancestor who reached 21 under Spanish rule was still a minor in law. Watch for that when reading a Spanish-period sale, or a claim filed with the United States land commissioners after 1821.

Majority at twenty-one

Full legal majority was 21, for men and women alike. The age came in with the common law in 1829 and held through 1950.⁶

A person below 21 was an infant, or minor. A minor's contracts, suits, and deeds were voidable — able to be undone — on reaching majority or shortly after. A minor who signed a deed could disaffirm it, meaning cancel it, on turning 21.⁷

That is why land bought from a young grantor sometimes produced a second, confirming deed a few years later. A confirming deed is a useful sign that the grantor was under age at the first sale.

One statutory exception arrived in 1917. It removed the disability of non-age from every male minor who was married, had been married, or married afterward. Such a man under 21 could manage his own estate, contract, and sue as if he were twenty-one. The section following carried the rule to divorced persons.⁸

Marriage

Before 1821: marriage under Spanish law

Spanish Florida was Catholic, and marriage was governed by the church. The civil law set the capacity to marry at 14 for a male and 12 for a female — the same ages the common law would supply after 1829, so the marrying age in Florida did not change when sovereignty did.⁹

The record of a Spanish-period marriage is a parish register rather than a county license. Those registers are the substitute for the civil marriage record that Florida counties began keeping only after 1821.¹⁰

Two routes to a valid marriage

Two systems of marriage ran side by side through 1950. The first was the licensed and solemnized marriage.

The office that issued the license changed over time. Under the territorial act the license came from the clerk of the county court of the county where the woman usually lived. The clerk took a two-hundred-dollar bond that there was no lawful cause to obstruct the marriage. An ordained minister solemnized the marriage, meaning performed the ceremony, or a justice of the peace did so where ministers were few. The certificate went back to the clerk within three months and was entered in a book kept for that purpose.¹¹

By 1872 the license issued from the clerk of the circuit court of the woman's county.¹² By 1881 it issued from the county judge, on a two-dollar fee, and ordained ministers, judicial officers, and notaries public could solemnize. Notaries were added in 1861.¹³

Whichever office held the power, it kept a bound record of every license issued and entered the officiant's return on it. That return gives the date and the person who performed the marriage. The bound record is the core Florida marriage record. The application behind it can give the parties' names, ages, race, birthplaces, occupations, and any previous marriage.¹⁴

A medical requirement was added in 1945. Each applicant had to file a physician's certificate showing a standard blood test approved by the State Board of Health, and a license issued without one was a misdemeanor.¹⁵ The certificate and laboratory report were filed with the county judge, so a license file from 1945 onward carries a doctor's name and a test date.

The second route was common-law marriage, which Florida recognized throughout. Three things were required, as the Florida courts stated them: legal capacity to contract marriage, a mutual agreement to be husband and wife from that moment rather than a promise for the future, and consummation of the agreement by living together.¹⁶

A couple so married were married in law. The courts held the license and solemnization statutes to be directory — instructions to the officials rather than conditions of the marriage. The marriage therefore stood although the licensing and record-keeping had not been followed.¹⁷ The abolishing statute reached only marriages entered after 1 January 1968, so every common-law marriage formed before 1950 was and remains valid.¹⁸

For a researcher this means a couple with no marriage license may still have been married, and their children legitimate. A common-law marriage surfaces later, in a probate file, a widow's pension application, or a suit over property. Witnesses there testified to the couple's agreement and to their reputation as married.

Where a ceremony had taken place but no certificate was ever filed, the marriage could be proved another way. Two witnesses who saw it swore an affidavit, which was filed with the county judge.¹⁹

Age and parental consent

The age of capacity to marry carried straight through from the Spanish period: 14 for a male and 12 for a female. The common law received in 1829 set the same ages, and no Florida statute displaced them for more than a century.²⁰ At or above those ages the marriage was valid.

A statute set a minimum age in 1937. No license to marry could be granted to a male under 18 or a female under 16, with or without a parent's consent. The one exception was for applicants who swore they were the parents or expectant parents of a child, and there the judge could issue the license at his discretion.²¹

The license law also carried a separate consent requirement throughout. A parent's or guardian's consent was needed whenever either party, of either sex, was under 21. The territorial act required consent wherever a party was, in its words, under age, which at that date meant under 21; the clerk took it verbally, or on the oath of one credible witness. The later statute required satisfactory evidence of consent before the license issued, and excepted a minor who had been married before.²²

From 1945 the county judge could issue no license at all without a sworn affidavit. Both parties signed it before an officer authorized to administer oaths, and it recited their true and correct ages.²³ A Florida marriage-license file from 1945 to 1950 therefore contains a statement of both parties' ages, sworn by the parties themselves.

A consent affidavit filed with a marriage license is proof that the bride or groom was under 21. Because the license statute was directory, a minor's marriage performed without a parent's consent was still a valid marriage. The consent rule bound the issuing officer and the officiant.

Marriages the law forbade

Three bars stood outside the license rules.

A person with a husband or wife still living could not marry again. Doing so, or continuing to live with the second spouse in Florida, was polygamy, punishable by up to five years in the state penitentiary. Two situations were excepted: a spouse absent and unheard of for three years, and a person divorced who was not the guilty cause of the divorce.²⁴

Close relatives could not marry. Marriage within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity — blood relationship — was void and punishable by up to twenty years. A man could not marry a woman related to him in a direct line of descent, nor his sister, aunt, or niece. A woman could not marry a man in the same relations to her. First cousins were outside the bar.²⁵

Marriage across racial lines was barred, and is treated below.

Enslaved people and people of color

An enslaved person had no legal capacity to enter a contract, and so could not contract a legal marriage before emancipation. Enslaved couples married by agreement or by ceremony within their own communities, and the law gave those unions no civil effect.

After emancipation the legislature changed course. By an act of 11 January 1866 all the laws regulating marriage between white persons were made to apply to the colored population of the state.²⁶ An African American marriage in Florida enters the ordinary county record from 1866.

The same act required a step that produced records. Couples of color living together as husband and wife, who had not been regularly married and wished to continue, had nine months to appear before an officiant and be married. After that, cohabiting without having done so was a misdemeanor. The clerk of the circuit court entered the certificate of any such marriage on the register of marriage licenses.²⁷ Those 1866 entries are a first record of freed families, and they date the union.

Marriage across racial lines was barred early and stayed barred. A territorial act of 23 January 1832 made it unlawful for a white person to marry anyone the statute placed in its list of non-white categories. It declared any such marriage void. It also provided that the children were illegitimate and could inherit no estate.²⁸

The penalties reached the officials first. A clerk of court who knowingly issued such a license forfeited one thousand dollars. A minister, justice of the peace, or judge who knowingly performed the ceremony was penalized as well.²⁹

From 1881 the parties themselves were liable. Either or both could be imprisoned for up to ten years, or fined up to one thousand dollars.³⁰ A later provision drew the line by blood, reaching any person with one-eighth or more African ancestry.³¹

A couple in this position married out of state where they could. Florida courts would in some circumstances recognize such a marriage as to property, if it was valid where the couple actually lived and married.²⁸

Property Ownership

Before 1821: community property under Spanish law

Spanish law treated a marriage as a partnership in property. Whatever the couple gained during the marriage — the gananciales — was divided equally between them, and property was presumed to belong to both unless one of them proved it was separately theirs. What each brought into the marriage, and whatever either received afterward by inheritance or gift, stayed that spouse's own.³²

This is the largest single difference between Spanish-period and later Florida property law, and it is why the territorial legislature protected it. The act of 28 December 1824 preserved these marital rights for couples already married when the government changed, so a wife married in Spanish Florida kept a half interest in the marital gains that the common law would not have given her.

Land itself came from the Crown by royal grant. Those grants, and the papers filed to confirm them before the United States commissioners after 1821, are the property record for the Spanish and British periods.³³

Men and children

A free man of legal age could own, buy, and sell land freely.

A minor could own land by gift, inheritance, or purchase. A guardian managed it, and the county judge held general jurisdiction over minors and their estates, took security from every guardian, and authorized any sale of a minor's land.³⁴ Land belonging to children after a father's death therefore appears in guardianship files and in petitions to the county judge for leave to sell.

Married women, 1845 to 1868

Under the common law received in 1829 a married woman was a feme covert — a wife under coverture, the legal condition in which her identity merged into her husband's. She could not contract, and her husband controlled her property.

Florida changed that early, by statute, in 1845. A woman who married while owning real or personal property kept her title to it. Her property stayed separate, independent, and beyond her husband's control despite coverture, and could not be taken for his debts. A married woman could also acquire property during the marriage by gift, purchase, bequest, or distribution.³⁵

Two limits went with that ownership. Her property stayed in her husband's care and management, and she could not sue him for the rents or profits of it. And her real estate could be conveyed only by the joint deed of husband and wife, duly attested and recorded.³⁶

So from 1845 a wife's own land is sold by a deed in both names. Her separate ownership is nearly a quarter-century older than the Reconstruction constitution.

Married women, 1868 to 1943

The Constitution of 1868 put the rule in the fundamental law. All property of the wife, owned before marriage or acquired afterward by gift, devise (a gift of land by will), descent, or purchase, was her separate property and not liable for her husband's debts. The Constitution of 1885 continued it.³⁷

Separate ownership still left control with her husband. For decades a married woman conveyed or mortgaged her own land only where her husband joined in the deed and she was examined privately.

That private examination — the privy examination — is a distinctive Florida record, and it names her. An officer authorized to take acknowledgments examined her separately and apart from her husband. She had to acknowledge that she executed the deed freely and voluntarily, without compulsion or fear of her husband. The officer's certificate had to recite all of it.³⁸

The courts held the examination indispensable to the validity of a wife's conveyance. They held the officer's certificate conclusive short of fraud, which her own testimony alone could not establish.³⁹

The separate acknowledgment ended in 1943. The Florida Supreme Court confirmed that after the 1943 act it was no longer part of the due execution of a married woman's deeds, mortgages, and relinquishments of dower.⁴⁰ The Married Women's Emancipation Act, effective the same year, let a married woman deal with her separate property, contract, sue, and convey exactly as if she were single.⁴¹

Deeds made by married women before 1943 that lacked the separate acknowledgment were validated afterward by a curative statute.⁴² That is a measure of how often the requirement was missed.

Free dealers

From 1879 a married woman could be licensed as a free dealer. The license authorized her to take charge of her own estate and to deal in it in every respect as though she were single.

She petitioned the circuit court sitting in chancery — its equity side, which handled matters the ordinary courts could not — for the circuit where she lived, gave notice once a week for four successive weeks in a newspaper, and took her license on the court's order.⁴³

The proceeding leaves a short run of records that name and date her: the chancery petition, the published notice, and the license entered by the court. Where a married woman sells or mortgages land in her own name without her husband joining, a free-dealer license is the thing to look for.

When a wife signed her husband's deed

Two separate rules put a wife's signature on her husband's deeds, and they are worth keeping apart.

The first is dower, the widow's interest in her late husband's land discussed under Inheritance below. While the husband lived, his wife held an inchoate dower interest — one that had not yet vested, because it would take effect only if she outlived him. A buyer wanted her signature on the husband's deed to release it.

The second is homestead. From the Constitution of 1868 the family homestead was exempt from forced sale for debt. It belonged to the head of a family residing in Florida, and covered up to 160 acres outside a town, or a half-acre within one, plus $1,000 in personal property. It could be sold, mortgaged, or given away only with the joinder — the joint signature — of husband and wife.⁴⁴

The Constitution of 1885 kept the joinder rule. The courts enforced it strictly, treating a conveyance of homestead without proper joinder as void.⁴⁵

Witnessing a deed

A deed granting an estate of freehold, or a term of more than two years, was signed, sealed, and delivered in the presence of at least two subscribing witnesses — people who signed the deed themselves to attest it. A conveyance made otherwise passed nothing. The rule came in with the territorial act of 15 November 1828 and stood unchanged through the code of 1906.⁴⁶

The statute set no age for those witnesses, so competency governed. Deeds in practice were witnessed by adults, which is unsurprising given that a witness might later be called to prove the deed in court, but no Florida statute or decision before 1950 fixed a minimum age.

A wife released her dower in the same way from the territorial period onward. She either made herself a party to her husband's conveyance, or signed a separate relinquishment under her hand and seal before two witnesses, and in no other way.⁴⁷

Enslaved people and free people of color

An enslaved person owned nothing in law and inherited nothing. Whatever an enslaved person held belonged to the enslaver.

Free people of color could own land, and did. The digest of the general statutes in force in 1847 sets down no rule limiting what a free person of color could own.⁴⁸

What the law restricted was the freedom to act on that ownership. From January 1848 every free person of color over the age of twelve was required to have a guardian. The free person could choose the guardian, and a parent chose for a child under ten. The person chosen appeared before the judge of probate of the county. If satisfied of that person's fitness, the judge issued a certificate under his seal of office, for a fee of three dollars. The guardian could sue to recover money owing to the free person and held the same control as a guardian in any other case.⁴⁹

That certificate is a record, and it names both people. Look for it in the probate judge's files from 1848 to the Civil War. By 1861 the guardian was also answerable for the free person's taxes.⁵⁰

Other disabilities fell on entering and moving about the state, on testimony, and on the consequences of a conviction. A free person of color convicted of a crime and unable to pay the fine and costs had his services sold at public auction by the sheriff, to whoever would take him for the shortest term.⁵¹ A sheriff's sale of services under that provision is a record, and it names the person sold.

The guardian requirement fell on 11 January 1866. An act of that date repealed the whole body of law on enslaved people and free people of color, and made the criminal law apply equally to all inhabitants without distinction of color. Two things were expressly kept back from the repeal: the act barring free people of color from migrating into the state, and the act forbidding the sale of firearms and ammunition to them.⁵²

The Constitution of 1868 secured property rights regardless of race. From that point the racial bars on owning and inheriting property were gone.

Immigrants and the alien land law

Foreign-born residents were on a different footing, and for most of this period a favorable one. The Constitution of 1885 gave foreigners the same rights as citizens in the ownership, inheritance, and disposition of property in Florida, without qualification.⁵³

An amendment ratified on 2 November 1926 cut an exception into that guarantee. It kept the equal rights for foreigners eligible to become United States citizens, but gave the legislature power to limit, regulate, and prohibit the ownership, inheritance, disposition, possession, and enjoyment of Florida real estate by foreigners not eligible for citizenship.⁵⁴ Federal naturalization law at the time barred most Asian immigrants from citizenship, so the amendment reached them.

For research the practical point is that the legislature never passed a statute carrying the amendment into effect, and no court ever applied it. The provision sat unused until it was repealed in 2018. A researcher will therefore not find Florida land denied to an immigrant under it, but it is part of the record of what the law allowed.

Inheritance

Before 1821: forced heirship under Spanish law

Spanish law did not let a parent disinherit children. A testator with children or grandchildren had to make them his heirs, and could give away only one-fifth of his property — the quinto — out of which funeral and church expenses came first. He could favor one child above the others with a further third, the mejora, but the rest had to be divided among them. Where there were no descendants, parents and grandparents took the same protected place.⁵⁵

A child born outside marriage inherited from the mother ahead of her own parents, but took nothing from the father where he had lawful children or living parents. Later marriage of the parents, or a royal grant, made such a child legitimate.⁵⁶

The age to make a will was 14 for a male and 12 for a female, and a woman could not witness one.⁵⁷

So a Spanish-period estate divides very differently from a territorial one. If an ancestor died in Florida before 1821, expect the children to take four-fifths of the estate whatever the will says.

Two tracks: land and personal property

Where a person died intestate — without a will — Florida divided the estate by statute. The estate ran in two tracks, one for land and one for personal property. The widow's interest turned on how many children there were.⁵⁸

Land descended to the children. It passed in parcenary, meaning to co-heirs holding it together, to the children and their descendants. By a change made after 1881 it passed to the husband alongside the children where the person who died was a married woman.

Where there were no children, all the property went to the surviving spouse. Where there was no spouse either, it passed to the parents, then to brothers and sisters, and outward through the collateral kindred.⁵⁸

The widow's protected interest in the land was dower. Dower was a life estate: the use of one-third of her husband's land for her lifetime, without ownership of it.⁵⁹ The land itself descended to the heirs at his death subject to her thirds, and came to them free of dower when she died.

In the personal estate her dower share was larger, and it was outright ownership. It came to her free of the husband's debts and was preferred over other claims.⁶⁰

What the widow took

The widow's election

A widow entitled to dower could choose to take a child's part instead. She had twelve months after the will was proved, or after letters of administration were granted — the county judge's written authority to an administrator to settle an estate.⁶¹

The choice mattered. Dower gave her a life estate in the land, which returned to her husband's estate at her death. A child's part gave her a fee-simple share of the land, meaning outright ownership she could sell or leave by will, and absolute ownership of her share of the personal property.

So a widow with three children who elected a child's part took one-fourth outright. A widow who took dower held a life interest in one-third.

Her election was filed with the county judge. It is a dated, signed document that names her and fixes the family. Before emancipation the personal property she took absolutely included enslaved people by name, so a widow's allotment from this period can identify enslaved individuals and place them with a particular household.

Where the husband died intestate leaving no children, she took the whole estate outright. That held unless she filed a written election to take dower within one year of his death.⁶² Beyond her share she kept the dwelling house until her dower was assigned. She also kept her wearing apparel and enough household goods, provisions, and farming utensils for the family's maintenance, set apart by the appraisers.⁶³

The Probate Act of 1933 closed this period. It revised and consolidated the whole law of wills, probate, descent and distribution, dower, and the administration of estates.⁶⁴

The act took effect on 1 October 1933 and governs the estates of people dying after that moment. The estate of anyone who died before it is administered under the law in force at the death.⁶⁵ So for a Florida ancestor who died up to 30 September 1933, the rules set out above are the rules that governed the estate.

Minors and guardians

A minor's inheritance was handled through guardianship. Where a child inherited land or money, the county judge's court appointed a guardian to hold and manage it. The guardian accounted to the court and made a final settlement when the minor came of age.

Those guardianship accounts and final settlements, filed as the minor turned 21, are among the most useful Florida records for fixing a child's age and parentage.

A father could name a guardian for his children by deed or by will. Where he had not, the county judge appointed one where it appeared necessary and proper. The choice belonged to the judge throughout. The guardian was the court's officer, and the minor had no right to any particular person, so Florida set no age at which he or she could select a guardian.³⁴ A mother's attempt to name a guardian by will was a nullity. This differs from Spanish practice, under which a guardian was appointed for a fatherless child only up to 14 for a boy and 12 for a girl, and a curator managed the estate from that age to 25.⁶⁶

The county judge took security from every guardian of a minor's estate, required inventories and annual accounts, and authorized any sale of the minor's land. A guardian was therefore appointed chiefly because a minor owned property.

Because guardianship followed the father's death and attached to property, the word orphan in Florida guardianship papers is usually describing a child whose father had died, not one who had lost both parents. Read it that way unless the file says otherwise.

Children born outside marriage

A child born outside marriage inherited from and through the mother as though lawfully born. Florida carried that rule from its first descent act of 1829, and the courts read it to reach the mother herself rather than her wider kindred.⁶⁷

Inheritance on the father's side turned on legitimation. The ordinary route was the later marriage of the parents. Where the mother and the reputed father married at any time after the birth, the child was in all respects deemed legitimate. Any bastardy bond — the security a reputed father gave the county to support the child — was discharged.⁶⁸ A parents' marriage that post-dates a child's birth is therefore the record to look for.

Cutting the other way, the children of a marriage forbidden across racial lines were declared illegitimate and barred from inheriting, as noted under Marriage above.²⁸

Children of enslaved couples

This rule is the key to African American inheritance research in Florida.

An act of 14 January 1866 declared that where colored persons had lived together as husband and wife, and had recognized each other as such before the world, they were husband and wife in law. They were as fully married as if a proper officer had solemnized the marriage. All children born of such parents were legitimated, made heirs of their parents, and made capable of inheriting.⁶⁹

The rule was carried forward and refined later in the century. As it stood in the twentieth-century codes it reached couples who had so lived and recognized each other before 1 January 1866. It made their children heirs of both parents and of their blood relatives in every line of descent.⁷⁰

The courts drew a firm limit at freedom. Children of a slave union that had ended before emancipation took no inheritable blood. The same was true where the parents never ratified or recognized the relationship as a marriage once they were free. Such children were treated as neither legitimate nor illegitimate under the descent statutes.⁷¹

For a formerly enslaved family the decisive question is whether the couple's relationship carried into freedom. Where it did, the children inherited from both parents.

Wills and who could make one

The person making a will, the testator, had to be of legal age and of sound mind.

The age was 21, for real and personal property alike. There was no split by kind of property and none by sex. The rule traces to the territorial wills act of 20 November 1828 and held for more than a century.⁷² The Probate Act lowered it to 18 from 1 October 1933, for every person male or female, married or single.⁷³

One exception ran in a married woman's favor. She could dispose of her property by will as if she were single, although still a minor.⁷⁴

Witnesses to a will

A will of real estate was signed by the testator, or by another in the testator's presence and at his direction. It was then attested in the testator's presence by witnesses. A will made otherwise was void.

The number of witnesses changed once, and the date is fixed. From the act of 1832 a will of land required three or more witnesses, and that requirement still stood in the digest of the laws in force in 1881. The Revised Statutes of 1892 cut the number to two or more, and the code of 1906 carried the new figure forward.⁷⁵ By the code of 1906 two were enough.⁷⁶ So a Florida will of land made before 1892 and attested by only two witnesses was void as a devise of land. It was not void altogether: such a will still passed the personal property, if it was good in other respects.⁷⁷ A defective will of this kind is worth reading closely, because the land in it descended to the heirs as though there were no will while the goods went where the will directed.

The Probate Act fixed the form from 1933. The testator signed at the end, or another signed for him in his presence and at his direction, and he signed or acknowledged his signature before at least two attesting witnesses present at the same time.⁷⁸

Witnesses were held to competency rather than to an age. Any person who understood what he or she was attesting could witness. An executor was a competent witness unless he was himself a legatee or devisee.⁷⁹

A witness who was also a beneficiary lost the gift, which kept the witness disinterested. Under the Probate Act a gift to a subscribing witness is void unless at least two other disinterested subscribing witnesses signed.⁷³

A nuncupative will — an oral will spoken in the testator's last sickness before witnesses — passed personal property. A formal witnessed writing was required to pass land or, before emancipation, enslaved people.⁸⁰ Before emancipation a testator could dispose by will of the enslaved people he held at his death, so an antebellum will can name them.

Executors and administrators

The age to serve as executor or administrator was 21. Where a will named a minor as executor, the court granted administration with the will annexed — that is, appointed someone else to carry out the will — until the minor came of age.⁸¹

A married woman could serve as administratrix where her husband filed his written consent with the county judge.⁸²

Taxation

Before 1821: no individual tax rolls

Florida's own revenue statutes begin with the territorial act of 1828, and the county tax rolls begin with them. For the Spanish and British periods there is no equivalent annual list of taxable inhabitants to work from.

What stands in its place is the land record. Royal grants, and the claims filed to confirm them before the United States commissioners and courts after 1821, name landholders and describe their holdings, and they are gathered in the printed collections of Spanish and British Florida land papers.³³

What was taxed in the territory

From 1828 to 1845 the territorial tax fell on land by the acre and by grade rather than by value. First rate land paid half a cent an acre, second rate a quarter of a cent, third rate an eighth. Town lots were taxed at five cents on every hundred dollars of value, leaving the buildings on them out of account.

Trade and license taxes came on top. They ran from five cents on every hundred dollars of merchandise sold in the year to five dollars on an innkeeper, fifty dollars on a billiard table, and a dollar on a four-wheeled pleasure carriage. The property of religious societies and schools was exempt, as was land still held by the United States and land whose title was in dispute under the Spanish treaty.⁸³

The same act had the county court appoint an assessor and a collector for each county, and fixed the first of February as the day the assessment spoke from, so a tax roll describes what a man held on that date rather than when the collector reached him.⁸⁴

What was taxed after statehood

The state's revenue act of 24 July 1845 kept the same shape and changed the figures. Land paid three-fourths of a cent an acre for first rate, half a cent for second, and a quarter of a cent for third. Town lots paid ten cents on every hundred dollars of value, and this time the improvements counted. Merchants paid twenty cents on every hundred dollars of stock in trade.⁸⁵

Later the state taxed real and personal property by value, which produced the county tax rolls. For genealogists those rolls work almost like a yearly census. A man appears when he came of age or acquired taxable property, and drops off at death or departure.

Who counted as a poll

The answer changes at emancipation, and it is worth having straight. The early head taxes fell on the people a researcher is often hardest pressed to document.

A white man paid no tax on his own head before 1865. The capitation ran instead on enslaved people and on free men of color, and the figures changed at statehood.

The tax on an enslaved person was charged to the owner, so his name is the one on the roll. A free man of color was entered by his own name.⁸⁶ For an African American family those rolls are often the earliest surviving list on which an ancestor appears at all.

Emancipation ended those taxes by ending the statuses they rested on. The Constitution of 1865 then gave the General Assembly a bare power to authorize a capitation tax — a flat tax on each person, also called a head tax or poll tax — naming no class and setting no upper age limit. The tax article of the Constitution of 1838 had carried no such clause.⁸⁷

The legislature used that power at once, and aimed it at the freedpeople. Its school act of January 1866 laid a tax of one dollar on every male person of color between the ages of 21 and 55. The proceeds made a Common School Fund for the education of freedmen, and the tax was assessed and collected at the same time and in the same manner as the state tax.⁸⁸ Two other charges went with it. A pupil paid a tuition fee, set by the superintendent rather than by the act, and a teacher paid five dollars for the yearly certificate without which teaching a school of persons of color was a misdemeanor.⁸⁹

So the tax reached Black men at exactly the ages the general poll tax would reach after 1868, and it reached them two years earlier. The collector's list for it names Black men in 1866 and 1867, years in which they appear in few other public records.

The poll tax after 1868

The Constitution of 1868 replaced the old scheme with a single capitation on all men alike, and capped it. The legislature could levy a special capitation tax, but not above one dollar a year for state, county, and municipal purposes together.⁹⁰

The upper age moved before 1950. By the law in force in 1872 the poll tax fell on each male person over twenty-one and under sixty-five, divided equally between the state and the county. By 1881 the upper limit had come down to fifty-five.⁹¹

The rule then settled into the form it kept through 1950. One dollar a year fell on each male over 21 and under 55 who had lived in the state more than a year. There was an exemption for bodily infirmity, in the words of the statute for such as have lost a limb. The money went into the county school fund and was collected when property taxes were collected.⁹²

So a man became taxable as a poll at 21 and ceased to be one at 55. He could drop off the poll list earlier for infirmity.

The poll tax and the vote

The Constitution of 1885 allowed the legislature to require payment of the poll tax as a condition of voting, and the legislature did so in 1889.

Under that act the tax collector furnished the supervisor of registration, thirty days before any election, a list of everyone who had paid his capitation tax for the two preceding years. The supervisor noted those names on the registration books, and only men so noted could vote. A man whose name was missing had to produce his receipts at the polls.⁹³

By the turn of the century the requirement had settled into the form the code of 1906 carries. Poll taxes for the two preceding years had to be paid before the second Saturday of the month before the election. Those under age, those over fifty-five, and those who had lost a limb in battle were exempt.⁹⁴

The same act of 1889 ordered the receipts printed in book form with duplicates retained, each stating the payer's name and the year paid.⁹³ That is why poll-tax receipts and annotated registration lists survive, and why they can place a man in a county in a given year.

Taxes on individuals in the twentieth century

Florida closed two doors and opened one during the last decades covered here.

A constitutional amendment ratified in 1924 forbade any tax on inheritances, or on the income of residents or citizens of the state.⁹⁵ An amendment ratified in 1930 allowed a tax on inheritances and estates again, but only up to the amount that federal law let a taxpayer credit against the federal estate tax, and only while that federal tax lasted. The legislature laid one in 1931 and replaced it in 1933.⁹⁶ A general sales tax followed in 1949.⁹⁷

For research, the practical point is that no Florida return of personal income exists before 1950. The county tax roll and the poll list remain the records that name individuals.

Courts

Before 1821: courts under Spanish law

Spanish Florida had no jury. Cases were decided by the governor and by the ordinary judges and alcaldes on written proofs gathered by a notary, and public office, including judicial office, was closed to women.⁹⁸ The papers those proceedings generated sit with the Spanish colonial records rather than in any county courthouse.

Jury service

In the territorial period the jury was drawn from the free white male inhabitants above 21 and under 50. Landowning was not a general requirement: only for the trial of a cause affecting title to real estate was the jury composed of freeholders, meaning men who owned land outright. Doctors and clergymen were exempt from service.⁹⁹

From Reconstruction the qualification was tied to the vote. Grand jurors, who decided whether to bring charges, and petit jurors, who sat on the trial itself, were both taken from the registered voters of the county. Any qualified elector was liable to be drawn, with those over sixty-five excused.¹⁰⁰ Because the Constitution of 1868 extended the vote to men of all races, drawing the jury from the registered voters carried eligibility for jury service with it.

By the end of the century the qualification had changed again. Jurors were taken from the male persons above 21 who had lived in the state a year and in their county six months and were citizens of Florida. A person convicted of an infamous crime — bribery, forgery, perjury, larceny, and the like — was disqualified unless his civil rights had been restored. That disqualification was not new with the statute: the Constitution of 1868 had already written it into the fundamental law, alongside the rule drawing jurors from the registered voters.¹⁰¹

Under that later statute any qualified man could serve whether or not he owned land. The courts confirmed that a juror needed no freehold or householder qualification.¹⁰²

On its face the jury statute reached all races, and the Florida Supreme Court said so. Black men were legally eligible for jury service from 1868, though in practice they were widely excluded.¹⁰³

Women as jurors

The jury statute drew jurors from male persons, and the Florida Supreme Court confirmed in 1939 that women were outside it.¹⁰⁴

In 1949 the legislature admitted women to jury service on their own initiative. A woman served where she registered in advance to do so, and juries stayed overwhelmingly male.¹⁰⁵ Until 1949, a Florida jury was a body of men.

Criminal responsibility

Florida fixed the age of criminal responsibility by statute a year before it received the common law. The territorial crimes act of 1828 provided that no child under the age of nine could be found guilty of any crime. It treated as of sound mind a person who had reached fourteen, or who was below fourteen and knew the distinction between good and evil.¹⁰⁶

So under that act a child under 9 could not be convicted. A child from 9 to 14 could be convicted on proof that he or she understood right from wrong. From 14 a person answered as an adult.

That statutory rule did not last to 1950. It is absent from the digests of the laws in force in 1872 and 1881 and from the code of 1906, so it went out with the general criminal act of 1868, which carries no provision on capacity.¹⁰⁷

The common law received in 1829 then supplied the rule. No child under 7 was capable of crime. A child from 7 to 14 was presumed incapable until the presumption was met by proof of understanding. From 14 there was full responsibility.¹⁰⁸

One related rule was settled by statute in 1901. The common-law presumption that a boy under fourteen could not commit rape was abolished, and capability was left to the jury.¹⁰⁹

Florida established no general statewide juvenile court in these years. A comprehensive juvenile court act for the state was still being proposed in 1951.¹¹⁰ A child of 14 could therefore be tried and convicted as an adult, and a child's case stayed in the ordinary criminal courts and their records.

Witnesses

Testimony was governed by competency rather than by age. A witness of any age could testify if the witness understood the duty to tell the truth and could relate what he or she had seen.

Race restricted testimony for much of the period. From 1828 to 1868 the statute set the line by the race of the parties, not by which side the witness helped. A person of color, enslaved or free, could testify only where the case was a state prosecution for or against people of color, or a civil suit in which free people of color were the only parties, and in no other case whatever.¹¹¹ Their evidence was unavailable in any matter with a white party on either side.

Before an enslaved witness was examined the court had to charge him in a set form. The charge warned that false testimony would be punished by thirty-nine lashes and an hour with his ears nailed to a post.¹¹²

The courts opened first. From 11 January 1866 the judicial tribunals of the state, and their processes, were accessible to all the inhabitants without distinction of color, for the prosecution and defense of all the rights of person and property.⁵²

The Constitution of 1868 guaranteed equal civil rights, and from then people of color were competent witnesses on the same terms as white witnesses. A researcher reading an antebellum court file will find Black testimony only in the cases where it was admissible. After 1868 the barrier was gone.

Women as witnesses

A woman could testify. No Florida statute made sex a bar, and the competency rules turned on other things. That was a change from the Spanish period, when a woman could not witness a will.⁵⁷

From 1870 no person offered as a witness was excluded by reason of an interest in the outcome of the case. What survived was a narrower bar. A witness with an interest the case could affect could not testify about a transaction or conversation with a person since dead or insane.¹¹³ A widow suing on her husband's estate can therefore be silent in the file on exactly the point a researcher wants.

Husband and wife were the exception, and the rule turned in 1879. From that year neither husband nor wife was excluded as a witness in a civil action where one of them was an interested party.¹¹⁴ Before 1879 the common law received in 1829 governed, and neither could testify for or against the other.

Sources & Where to Verify

Constitutions

• Florida Constitution of 1838, 1865, 1868, and 1885. Florida Historical Legal Documents. Digital images. University of Florida Digital Collections. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/law (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Florida Constitution of 1865. Art. VIII, § 5 (power to authorize a capitation tax). Digital images. Florida State University College of Law Research Center. https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/CRC/CRC-1998/conhist/1865con.html (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Florida Constitution of 1868. Art. IV, § 26 (wife's separate property); art. IX, § 1 (homestead exemption and joint consent to convey); art. XII, § 6 (capitation tax). Digital images. Florida State University College of Law Research Center. https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/CRC/CRC-1998/conhist/1868con.html (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Florida Constitution of 1885. Declaration of Rights, § 18 (property rights of foreigners, amended 1926); art. VI, § 8 (poll tax as a voting prerequisite); art. IX, § 11 (income and inheritance taxes forbidden, added 1924); art. X (homestead); art. XI, § 1 (married woman's separate property). Digital images. Florida State University College of Law Research Center. https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/CRC/CRC-1998/conhist/1885con.html (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Florida constitutional amendments, by year of election. The amendment of 1924 forbidding income and inheritance taxes; House Joint Resolution no. 750 of 1925, ratified 2 November 1926, amending Declaration of Rights § 18 to allow the Legislature to bar property ownership by foreigners ineligible for citizenship; and House Joint Resolution no. 35 of 1929, ratified in 1930, admitting an estate tax capped at the federal credit. Digital images. Florida State University College of Law Research Center. https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/CRC/CRC-1998/conhist/1924amen.html; https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/CRC/CRC-1998/conhist/1926amen.html; and https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/CRC/CRC-1998/conhist/1930amen.html (accessed 7 August 2026).

Spanish and British Florida

• White, Joseph M., comp. A New Collection of Laws, Charters and Local Ordinances of the Governments of Great Britain, France and Spain, Relating to the Concessions of Land in Their Respective Colonies; Together with the Laws of Mexico and Texas on the Same Subject. 2 vols. Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, 1839. White was Florida's delegate to Congress and a commissioner on Florida private land claims. Volume 1 opens with the "Institutes of the Civil Law of Spain," a translated digest covering persons, guardianship, marriage, marital gains, wills, and inheritance — the source for every pre-1821 rule in this guide. Volume 2 carries the royal orders and decrees on lands in the two Floridas, the commissioners' reports, and the federal confirming acts. Digital images. Internet Archive. Vol. 1, https://archive.org/details/anewcollectionl01rogoog; vol. 2, https://archive.org/details/anewcollectionl00rogoog (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Moreau Lislet, L., and Henry Carleton, trans. The Laws of Las Siete Partidas Which Are Still in Force in the State of Louisiana. 2 vols. New Orleans: James M'Karaher, 1820. The standard English rendering of the Partidas used by American courts in the Gulf South, and a check on White's digest. Digital images. Internet Archive. Vol. 1, https://archive.org/details/10564976bsb; vol. 2, https://archive.org/details/10564977bsb (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Mowat, Charles Loch. East Florida as a British Province, 1763–1784. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1943. The governor, council, assembly, and courts of the British period, and the land-granting system. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/eastfloridaasbri00mowa (accessed 7 August 2026).

Codes and Compilations

• Bush, Allen H., comp. A Digest of the Statute Law of Florida, of a General and Public Character, in Force up to the First Day of January, 1872. Tallahassee, Fla.: Charles H. Walton, State Printer, 1872. Digested under an act approved 6 August 1868. The Reconstruction-era compilation, standing between Thompson and McClellan, and the volume for the wife's separate property, the marriage title, the crimes title, and the Code of Procedure. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/adigeststatutel00florgoog (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Calkins, James E., comp. The Revised General Statutes of Florida: Prepared Under Authority of Chapter 6930, Acts 1915, Chapter 7347, Acts 1917, and Chapter 7838, Acts 1919, Laws of Florida. DeLand, Fla.: The E. O. Painter Printing Co., 1920. 3 vols. Adopted by the Legislature 9 June 1919. The compilation in force for the last decades covered here, and the source of most section numbers in the notes. Each section prints its parallel section in the General Statutes of 1906 in parentheses, with the originating acts in the margin, and the annotations lead to the case law. Digital images. Google Books. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Florida Statutes. The current code, each section printed with the history line running back through the earlier compilations: § 2.01 (common law of England in force), §§ 693.03 and 694.04 (married women's conveyances), § 708.08 (Married Women's Emancipation Act), § 741.04 (issuance of marriage licenses), § 741.21 (incestuous marriages), § 741.211 (common-law marriage), § 826.01 (bigamy), § 40.01 (jurors), § 212.01 (Florida Revenue Act of 1949). The Florida Senate. https://www.flsenate.gov/laws/statutes/2011/2.01 (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Florida Statutes, 1945 and 1949. The official state code: the 1945 supplement to volume I of the Florida Statutes, 1941, and the 1949 consolidation of the 1941 statutes with the supplements printed in 1943, 1945, and 1947 — the last full edition inside the period covered here. Between them they carry the marriage chapter (ch. 741), judicial proof (ch. 90), the probate law (chs. 731–734), jurors (ch. 40), inheritance and estate taxes (ch. 198), and the sales tax (ch. 212) as they stood at the close, each section printed with its history line back through the earlier compilations. Chapters are posted individually. Digital images. Florida State University College of Law Research Center. https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/FLStatutes/index.html (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Florida Statutes, 1955–1996. Scanned images of the biennial statutes. The 1941 volumes, which adopted the 1940 revision, are not in this run; volume III of 1941, holding the British statutes in force in Florida and Whitfield's notes, is separately posted. Digital images. Florida State University College of Law Research Center. https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/FLStatutes/index.html (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Liddon, B. S., T. F. West, and J. C. B. Koonce, comps. The General Statutes of the State of Florida. St. Augustine, Fla.: The Record Company, 1906. Prepared under an act approved 3 June 1903. The revision in force at the turn of the century, and the source of the parallel section numbers given throughout the notes. Each section prints its parallel in the Revised Statutes of 1892 in parentheses, the originating act in the margin, and the case annotations beneath. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008595800 (accessed 7 August 2026).
• McClellan, James F., comp. A Digest of the Laws of the State of Florida: From the Year One Thousand Eight Hundred and Twenty-two, to the Eleventh Day of March, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Eighty-one, Inclusive. Tallahassee, Fla.: Printed at the Floridian Book and Job Office, 1881. Compiled under Laws of Florida, ch. 3028 (2 March 1877). It digests only the laws in force in 1881, so the antebellum provisions on slaves and free people of color are absent from it; for those, use Thompson's Digest. Chapters used here: 92 (descent), 95 (dower), 101 (evidence), 111 (guardians), 127 (jurors), 200 (wills), 202 (witnesses in criminal cases). Digital images. Google Books. https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Digest_of_the_Laws_of_the_State_of_Flo/9GASAAAAYAAJ (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Blount, W. A., C. M. Cooper, and L. C. Massey, commissioners. The Revised Statutes of the State of Florida: Prepared Under Authority of, and Adopted by, the Legislature of the State of Florida. Jacksonville, Fla.: DaCosta Printing and Publishing House, 1892. A revision enacted as law. Its § 1795 reduced the witnesses to a will of land from three to two, and its § 1797 first required a will of personal property to be written and signed; both are quoted in Brown v. Avery, 63 Fla. 355 (1912). The section numbers also appear in parentheses in the General Statutes of 1906 and in the history lines of the Florida Statutes. Held in Florida libraries and reproduced in the Hein and LLMC superseded-statutes sets; copies can be located through WorldCat.
• Thompson, Leslie A., comp. A Manual or Digest of the Statute Law of the State of Florida, of a General and Public Character, in Force at the End of the Second Session of the General Assembly of the State, on the Sixth Day of January, 1847. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1847. The antebellum compilation, and the volume for the provisions on slaves and free people of color that were repealed before the digest of 1881 was made. Digital images. Google Books. https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/_mYvAAAAYAAJ (accessed 7 August 2026).

Session Laws

• Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Florida. The statehood session volumes cited in the notes. The Internet Archive holds the run from 1845 through 1864, each volume separately: 1845, https://archive.org/details/actsofge1845flor (the revenue act of 24 July 1845); 1846–47, https://archive.org/details/actsofgen46flor; 1847–48, https://archive.org/details/actsofgen47flor (guardians for free people of color); 1848–49, https://archive.org/details/actsofgen48flor; 1860–61, https://archive.org/details/actsofgen60flor (notaries authorized to solemnize marriage; town taxes). Digital images. Internet Archive. (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Florida, 1865–66. The session that passed the Black Code. Chapter 1,474 [No. 11], approved 11 January 1866, opens the courts to all inhabitants without distinction of color and repeals the laws on slaves and free people of color; ch. 1,475 [No. 12], approved 16 January 1866, establishes schools for freedmen and lays the one-dollar tax on males of color between 21 and 55 that paid for them, at pp. 37–39. The volume also carries the marriage act of 11 January 1866 and the legitimation act of 14 January 1866. Full view. Not in the Internet Archive run. Digital images. Google Books. https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/kAI4AAAAIAAJ (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Acts of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Florida. The territorial session volumes holding the acts cited in the notes: the seventh session of 1828 (marriage licenses, conveyances, crimes, jurors, wills, guardians, revenue), 1829 (adoption of the common and statute laws of England; descents), 1832 (the amendment barring intermarriage), and 1838 (dower). Digital images. Internet Archive. 1828, https://archive.org/details/actsofle1828flor; 1829, https://archive.org/details/actsoflegis29flor; 1832, https://archive.org/details/actsoflegis32flor; 1838, https://archive.org/details/actsoflegis38flor (accessed 7 August 2026). The run is also posted, as Territorial Laws 1822–1845, by the State Library of Florida.
• General Acts and Resolutions Adopted by the Legislature of Florida at Its Twenty-fourth Regular Session, April 4 to and Including June 2, 1933. Tallahassee: published by authority of law, 1933. The general laws run from chapter 15858 in two parts, the second reaching 16302; the special acts follow from 16303. The Probate Act is chapter 16103, in part 2. Certified by Secretary of State R. A. Gray on 1 August 1933.
• Laws of Florida. The session volumes for the later acts cited in the notes — 1879, ch. 3126; 1881, chs. 3249 and 3283; 1887, ch. 3720; 1889, chs. 3850 and 3890; 1891, ch. 4015; 1893, ch. 4122; 1895, chs. 4322 and 4328; 1899, ch. 4749; 1901, ch. 4964; 1907, ch. 5596; 1909, ch. 5911; 1917, ch. 7364; 1919, chs. 7828 and 7838; 1931, ch. 15747; 1933, chs. 16015 and 16103; 1937, ch. 18021; 1943, chs. 21746 and 21932; 1945, chs. 22643, 22738, and 22783; 1949, chs. 25126 and 26319. The digitized coverage is uneven: the Internet Archive holds the statehood volumes from 1845 to 1864, the State Library of Florida and the FSU Research Center have posted the territorial laws and the run from 1945 onward, and the years between are held in print and on HathiTrust. https://law.fsu.edu/research-center/digitized-legal-collections (accessed 7 August 2026).

Court Cases

• Adams v. Sneed. 41 Fla. 151, 25 So. 893 (1899).
• Benedict v. Wilmarth. 46 Fla. 535, 35 So. 84 (1903).
• Brown v. Avery. 63 Fla. 355, 58 So. 34 (1912).
• Caras v. Hendrix. 62 Fla. 446, 57 So. 345 (1911).
• Carn v. Haisley. 22 Fla. 317 (1886).
• Daniel v. Sams. 17 Fla. 487 (1880).
• Hall v. State. 136 Fla. 644, 187 So. 392 (1939).
• Harrell v. Harrell. 8 Fla. 46 (1858).
• Hart v. Sanderson's Administrators. 18 Fla. 103 (1881).
• Hays v. Ernest. 32 Fla. 18, 13 So. 451 (1893).
• Hernandez v. Thomas. 50 Fla. 522, 39 So. 641 (1905).
• Johnson v. Wilson. 48 Fla. 76, 37 So. 179 (1904).
• Jones v. Jones. 119 Fla. 824, 161 So. 836 (1935).
• Keech v. Enriquez. 28 Fla. 597, 10 So. 91 (1891).
• McLeod v. Dell. 9 Fla. 451 (1861).
• Meyer v. Fogg. 7 Fla. 292 (1857).
• Scott v. Hotel Martinique. 48 So. 2d 160 (Fla. 1950).
• Shear v. Robinson. 18 Fla. 379 (1881).
• Simpson v. Gonzalez. 15 Fla. 9 (1874).
• State v. Madoil. 12 Fla. 151 (1867).
• Tarrance v. State. 43 Fla. 446, 30 So. 685 (1901).
• Thomas v. Craft. 55 Fla. 842, 46 So. 594 (1908).
• Whittington v. McCaskill. 65 Fla. 162, 61 So. 236 (1913).
• Williams v. Kimball. 35 Fla. 49, 16 So. 783 (1895).
• Woodberry v. Matherson. 19 Fla. 778 (1883).

Secondary and Reference Works

• Caselaw Access Project. Harvard Law School Library. Scanned volumes of the Florida Reports, with the decision date of every case; the source of the years given for the cases above. https://case.law (accessed 7 August 2026).
• FamilySearch Research Wiki. "Florida Court Records" and "Florida Probate Records." What the county judge's probate, marriage, administration, and guardianship files contain, and where those files are held now. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Florida_Court_Records (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Florida Department of State, Division of Library and Information Services. County records: the county courts before 1845, and the probate and estate records the State Archives holds. https://dos.fl.gov/library-archives/research/explore-our-resources/florida-history-culture-and-heritage/beloved/county/ (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Florida Memory. "A Guide to Researching the Territorial Era." What a marriage-license application records, and the surviving territorial-era county probate and marriage series. https://www.floridamemory.com/learn/research-tools/guides/territorialguide/page6.php (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Bartley, Abel A., and Irvin D. S. Winsboro. "The Long and Troubling History of Segregated Schools in Florida." 2015. Cites the school act of 1866 to the session volume at pp. 37–39. https://artshumanitieshawaii.org/assets/bartley,-abel---irvin-winsboro---2015-ahse-huic.pdf (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935. Ch. 15, "The Coming of the Lord," describes the Florida school tax of one dollar on males of color, the tuition fee, and the teacher's certificate fee.
• Duncan, E. B. Report of the Superintendent of Common Schools for Freedmen. Tallahassee, 8 November 1866. The first year of the system the 1866 act created. Digital images. Florida Memory. https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/329094 (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Gause, Rich. "Florida Statutes and Laws of Florida: Historical Versions." The chain of Florida revisions and compilations from Duval's Compilation of 1840 forward, with the digitized copy of each. University of Central Florida Libraries. https://guides.ucf.edu/floridastatutes/historical (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Ockerbloom, John Mark, ed. "Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly." The digitized Florida session volumes, listed year by year with the archive copy of each. The Online Books Page. https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=flactsres (accessed 7 August 2026).
• "Sketch of the Evolution of Florida Law." Florida Law Review. Thompson's Digest through the Florida Statutes of 1941. https://www.floridalawreview.com/article/78220-sketch-of-the-evolution-of-florida-law.pdf (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Taylor, Grace W. "Jury Service for Women." 12 Florida Law Review 224 (1959). https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/flr/vol12/iss2/6/ (accessed 7 August 2026).
• United States Women's Bureau. The Legal Status of Women in Florida. Bulletin 157-9. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011418494 (accessed 7 August 2026).
• Waybright, Roger J. "A Proposed Juvenile Court Act for Florida." 4 Florida Law Review 16 (1951). https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/flr/vol4/iss1/2/ (accessed 7 August 2026).

Citations

1. Joseph M. White, comp., A New Collection of Laws, Charters and Local Ordinances of the Governments of Great Britain, France and Spain, Relating to the Concessions of Land in Their Respective Colonies; Together with the Laws of Mexico and Texas on the Same Subject, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, 1839), 1: "Institutes of the Civil Law of Spain", a translated digest of the Spanish civil law prepared for American lawyers and courts handling land claims in the ceded territories. White sat as Florida's delegate to Congress and as a commissioner on Florida private land claims. Volume 1 carries the Institutes; volume 2 carries the Spanish and British Florida land papers, the treaties, and the federal acts confirming private grants. Digital images, Internet Archive (vol. 1, https://archive.org/details/anewcollectionl01rogoog/page/n30/mode/2up; vol. 2, https://archive.org/details/anewcollectionl00rogoog/page/n30/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). For the Partidas themselves in English see L. Moreau Lislet and Henry Carleton, trans., The Laws of Las Siete Partidas Which Are Still in Force in the State of Louisiana, 2 vols. (New Orleans: James M'Karaher, 1820); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/10564976bsb : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
2. Charles Loch Mowat, East Florida as a British Province, 1763–1784 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1943), for the governor, council, assembly, and courts established under the British administration; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/eastfloridaasbri00mowa : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
3. Act of 28 December 1824, printed in Allen H. Bush, comp., A Digest of the Statute Law of Florida, of a General and Public Character, in Force up to the First Day of January, 1872 (Tallahassee, Fla.: Charles H. Walton, State Printer, 1872), title "The Wife's Separate Property," § 1, preserving to husband and wife "all the rights and privileges of husband and wife, established or derived by marriage under the civil laws of Spain," for marriages solemnized before the change of government, "observing only the formalities of conveyance required by any other laws established" in the State; the marginal derivation reads "Act Dec. 28, 1824, Duval, 45; Thompson, 220." Digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/adigeststatutel00florgoog : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
4. Acts of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Florida (1829), "An Act Providing for the adoption of the Common and Statute Laws of England, and for repealing certain laws and ordinances," § 1, passed and approved 6 November 1829, declaring the common and statute laws of England of a general and not of a local nature, down to 4 July 1776, to be of force so far as consistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States and the acts of the Legislative Council; digital images, Internet Archive at p. 9; https://archive.org/details/actsoflegis29flor/page/n16/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). Section 2 repealed the laws and ordinances in force to 22 July 1822. Carried forward as James E. Calkins, comp., The Revised General Statutes of Florida: Prepared Under Authority of Chapter 6930, Acts 1915, Chapter 7347, Acts 1917, and Chapter 7838, Acts 1919, Laws of Florida, 3 vols. (DeLand, Fla.: The E. O. Painter Printing Co., 1920), 1: § 71, headed "Common law and certain statutes declared in force," carrying the marginal citation "Nov. 6, 1829, Sec. 1" and the parallel section of the General Statutes of 1906 at § 59; the repeal and saving provisions follow at §§ 72–73. Now Fla. Stat. § 2.01. Digital images, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
5. Joseph M. White, comp., A New Collection of Laws, Charters and Local Ordinances of the Governments of Great Britain, France and Spain, Relating to the Concessions of Land in Their Respective Colonies; Together with the Laws of Mexico and Texas on the Same Subject, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, 1839), 1: "Institutes of the Civil Law of Spain", bk. 1, tit. 1, § 3, dividing persons into those of full age, "above the age of twenty-five years, or minors," with puberty beginning at fourteen for a male and twelve for a female and infancy running to seven, at p. 3; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/anewcollectionl01rogoog/page/n31/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
6. The age is that of the common law, received in Florida by the act of 6 November 1829 (see note 4), and no Florida statute in this period displaced it. Two Florida provisions rest on it and fix it: the guardianship law, under which the county judge's guardian accounted and made a final settlement when the minor came of age; and Laws of Florida, 1917, ch. 7364, carried into the Revised General Statutes of 1920, §§ 3962–3963, which removes "the disability of non-age" from a married male minor "under the age of twenty-one years" and so presupposes twenty-one as the age of majority for those not married. The same age governed for women; no Florida statute of this period set a different age of majority by sex. ↩
7. The voidability of an infant's contracts and deeds, and the right to disaffirm on coming of age, is received common-law doctrine under the act of 6 November 1829 (note 4) rather than Florida statute; no territorial or state act in this period altered it. That the disability existed is confirmed by the statute enacted to lift it for one class of minors: Laws of Florida, 1917, ch. 7364 (Revised General Statutes of 1920, §§ 3962–3963), removing the disability of non-age from a married male minor so that he might "contract and be contracted with, sue and be sued… as if he were twenty-one years of age." ↩
8. Revised General Statutes of 1920, §§ 3962–3963, removing the disability of non-age of a married male minor and carrying the rule to divorced persons; from Laws of Florida, 1917, ch. 7364. Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
9. Joseph M. White, comp., A New Collection of Laws, Charters and Local Ordinances of the Governments of Great Britain, France and Spain, Relating to the Concessions of Land in Their Respective Colonies; Together with the Laws of Mexico and Texas on the Same Subject, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, 1839), 1: "Institutes of the Civil Law of Spain", bk. 1, tit. 6, that "the male under fourteen, and the female under twelve, cannot contract marriage," at p. 44; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/anewcollectionl01rogoog/page/n72/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
10. "Spanish Land Grants" and the parish register holdings described in the State Library and Archives of Florida's guide to the territorial and Spanish periods; and, for the Catholic parish registers of St. Augustine, the Diocese of St. Augustine Catholic Center archives. Florida Memory (https://www.floridamemory.com/learn/research-tools/guides/territorialguide/page6.php : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
11. Acts of the Legislative Council (seventh session, 1828), "An Act Concerning Marriage License," §§ 2–6: the license issued by the clerk of the county court of the county where the woman usually resides, on a bond of two hundred dollars that there is no lawful cause to obstruct the marriage; an ordained minister, or a justice of the peace where ordained ministers were too few, to solemnize; and the certificate transmitted to the clerk within three months and entered in a book kept for that purpose; at p. 19, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/actsofle1828flor/page/n40/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
12. Bush's Digest (1872), title "Marriage," § 2, the license issued "under the hand of the clerk of the Circuit Court of the county in which the female resides," and § 3, the officiant's certificate returned to that clerk, who records it and files it among the records of the county; at p. 578, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/adigeststatutel00florgoog/page/n590/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
13. Revised General Statutes of 1920, §§ 3933–3934 (General Statutes, 1906, §§ 2574–2575), the license from the county judge of the woman's county on a fee of two dollars, and ordained ministers of the Gospel, judicial officers, and notaries public authorized to solemnize; descending from the Act of 2 November 1829, § 2, through Laws of Florida, 1887, ch. 3720, § 2, and 1889, ch. 3890, § 1. Notaries were added by the act approved 8 February 1861, § 2, which also authorized them to take the renunciation of dower and the acknowledgment of deeds as fully as justices of the peace: Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Florida (tenth session, 1860–61), ch. 1127; digital images, Internet Archive at p. 73; https://archive.org/details/actsofgen60flor/page/n78/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
14. "A Guide to Researching the Territorial Era," describing the content of Florida marriage license applications and the surviving county marriage series. Florida Memory (https://www.floridamemory.com/learn/research-tools/guides/territorialguide/page6.php : accessed 7 August 2026). What any given application records varies by county and by period. ↩
15. Fla. Stat. §§ 741.05-1 to 741.05-12 (1949), requiring of each applicant a standard blood test approved by the Florida State Board of Health, made by an approved laboratory and certified by the examining physician on a form filed with the county judge; the reports are confidential (§ 741.0511) and issuing a license without compliance is a misdemeanor (§ 741.0510). From Laws of Florida, 1945, ch. 22738; digital images, Florida State University College of Law Research Center (https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/FLStatutes/index.html : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
16. Jones v. Jones, 119 Fla. 824, 161 So. 836 (1935); Daniel v. Sams, 17 Fla. 487 (1880). Digital images of the Florida Reports, Caselaw Access Project, Harvard Law School Library (https://case.law : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
17. Caras v. Hendrix, 62 Fla. 446, 57 So. 345 (1911); and see the annotation to Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3933. Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
18. Laws of Florida, 1967, ch. 67-571, now Fla. Stat. § 741.211. Digital images of the current Florida Statutes, The Florida Senate (https://www.flsenate.gov/laws/statutes/2011/2.01 : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
19. Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3937 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2578), marriage provable by the affidavit of two witnesses who saw the ceremony where no certificate was made or the license was lost; from Laws of Florida, 1879, ch. 3126, § 1. Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
20. The common-law ages follow from the reception act of 1829, note 4 above. No minimum marrying age is set in the marriage titles of Bush's Digest (1872) or the General Statutes of 1906, both of which regulate the license and the ceremony only. A statutory floor arrives in 1937, in the note following; at p. 578, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/adigeststatutel00florgoog/page/n590/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
21. Fla. Stat. § 741.06 (1949), headed "When marriage license may be issued to male under eighteen years or to female under sixteen years": "No license to marry shall be granted to any male under the age of eighteen years, nor to any female under the age of sixteen years, with or without the consent of their parents, unless the applicants acknowledge under oath that they are the parents or expectant parents of a child, and in that event the license may be issued at the discretion of the judge." The printed history reads "§1, ch. 18021, 1937; CGL 1940 Supp. 5850(1)"; digital images, Florida State University College of Law Research Center (https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/FLStatutes/index.html : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
22. Acts of the Legislative Council (seventh session, 1828), "An Act Concerning Marriage License," § 6, the consent of the parent or guardian of a party under age "made verbally to the Clerk, or proof of such consent by the oath of one credible witness"; Bush's Digest (1872), title "Marriage," § 2, requiring "satisfactory evidence of the consent of the parent or guardian" where either party is under twenty-one, with a previously married person excepted; and Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3933 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2574), to the same effect; at p. 19, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/actsofle1828flor/page/n40/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
23. Fla. Stat. § 741.04 (1945), printed in the 1945 supplement to volume I of the Florida Statutes, 1941, headed "Marriage license issued": no county judge to issue a license "unless there shall be first presented and filed with him an affidavit in writing, signed by both parties to the marriage, made and subscribed before some person authorized by law to administer an oath, reciting the true and correct ages of such parties," and unless both are over twenty-one, with the written consent of the parents required where either party is under twenty-one. From Laws of Florida, 1945, ch. 22643, § 1; digital images, Florida State University College of Law Research Center (https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/FLStatutes/index.html : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
24. Bush's Digest (1872), title "Crimes and Misdemeanors," §§ 4–5, polygamy and the exceptions for a spouse absent three years and for a person divorced who was not the guilty cause; from the general criminal act of 6 August 1868. Now Fla. Stat. § 826.01; at pp. 246–247, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/adigeststatutel00florgoog/page/n256/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
25. Bush's Digest (1872), title "Crimes and Misdemeanors," § 7, "Persons within the degrees of consanguinity within which marriages are prohibited or declared by law to be incestuous and void, who intermarry," punishable by imprisonment not exceeding twenty years; from the general criminal act of 6 August 1868. The forbidden degrees are set out in the Revised Statutes of 1892, § 2602, carried through the General Statutes of 1906, § 3525, and the Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 5415, to Fla. Stat. § 741.21, which bars marriage to a person related by lineal consanguinity, and to a sister, aunt, or niece, or a brother, uncle, or nephew; at p. 247, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/adigeststatutel00florgoog/page/n257/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
26. Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3942 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2583), applying all laws regulating marriage between white persons to the colored population from nine months after the act; from Laws of Florida, 1866, ch. 1469, § 5, "An Act to establish and enforce the marriage relation between persons of color," approved 11 January 1866. Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
27. Bush's Digest (1872), title "Marriage," §§ 5–7, printing the act of 11 January 1866: colored inhabitants living together as husband and wife and not regularly married, who wish to continue in that relation, to appear within nine months before a person authorized to perform the ceremony; those found cohabiting after that time guilty of a misdemeanor punishable as fornication and adultery; the issue of the prior cohabitation legitimated by the marriage; and the clerk of the Circuit Court of the county to enter the certificate "upon the register of marriage licenses in his office."; at p. 579, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/adigeststatutel00florgoog/page/n591/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
28. Acts of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Florida (1832), no. 3, "An Act to amend the Act entitled 'An act concerning Marriage License,'" passed 14 January and approved 23 January 1832, §§ 1–2: intermarriage between a white person and any negro, mulatto, quarteroon, or other coloured person made unlawful, such marriage "utterly void and null," and the issue "regarded as bastard, or bastards, and incapable of having or receiving any estate real, personal, or mixed by inheritance"; digital images, Internet Archive at pp. 4–5; https://archive.org/details/actsoflegis32flor/page/n13/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). Carried forward as Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3938 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2579). On the recognition of an out-of-state marriage of persons domiciled elsewhere and valid where made, as to property in Florida, Whittington v. McCaskill, 65 Fla. 162, 61 So. 236 (1913). ↩ ↩ ↩
29. Acts of the Legislative Council (1832), no. 3, §§ 3–4, the clerk of court forfeiting one thousand dollars for knowingly issuing such a license, and a penalty on any minister of the Gospel, justice of the peace, or judge who knowingly performed the ceremony; carried forward as Revised General Statutes of 1920, §§ 3940–3941 (General Statutes, 1906, §§ 2581–2582); at p. 5, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/actsoflegis32flor/page/n14/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
30. Revised General Statutes of 1920, 2: § 5419 (General Statutes, 1906, § 3529), headed "Intermarriage of white and negro persons," punishing either or both parties "by imprisonment in the State prison not exceeding ten years, or by fine not exceeding one thousand dollars"; from Laws of Florida, 1881, ch. 3283, § 1, amended by 1903, ch. 5140, § 1. Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
31. Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3939 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2580). The one-eighth rule is a later addition; the act of 1832 defined the prohibited classes by description rather than by proportion of ancestry. Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
32. Joseph M. White, comp., A New Collection of Laws, Charters and Local Ordinances of the Governments of Great Britain, France and Spain, Relating to the Concessions of Land in Their Respective Colonies; Together with the Laws of Mexico and Texas on the Same Subject, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, 1839), 1: "Institutes of the Civil Law of Spain", bk. 1, tit. 7, ch. 5 and §§ 1–2, that the gains resulting from the joint employment of the spouses' property "be equally divided between both partners," that ganancial property is all that is increased or multiplied during marriage, that property "is supposed to be common, except that which each shall prove to be their own separate property," and that what a spouse brings into the marriage or afterward receives by inheritance or gift does not come into the division, at p. 61; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/anewcollectionl01rogoog/page/n89/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
33. Joseph M. White, comp., A New Collection of Laws, Charters and Local Ordinances of the Governments of Great Britain, France and Spain, Relating to the Concessions of Land in Their Respective Colonies; Together with the Laws of Mexico and Texas on the Same Subject, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, 1839), vol. 2, gathering the royal orders and decrees relating to lands in the two Floridas, the reports of the commissioners, and the federal acts for confirming private land claims in Florida; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/anewcollectionl00rogoog/page/n30/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩ ↩
34. Revised General Statutes of 1920, §§ 3964–3968 (General Statutes, 1906, §§ 2603–2607), the father's appointment of a guardian by deed in writing attested by two witnesses, or by will, the county judge's appointment where necessary and proper, the security taken, and his general jurisdiction over infants and their estates; from the Act of 20 November 1828, §§ 1, 50. That the guardian is the court's officer and the infant has no right to any particular guardian, Simpson v. Gonzalez, 15 Fla. 9 (1874), printed as the annotation to General Statutes, 1906, § 2604; that a mother's testamentary appointment is a nullity, Hernandez v. Thomas, 50 Fla. 522, 39 So. 641 (1905). Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩ ↩
35. Bush's Digest (1872), title "The Wife's Separate Property," §§ 2–4 and 6, from the Act of 6 March 1845, §§ 1–8 (Pamph. 24; Thompson 230–31): a married woman's title to her property continuing "separate, independent, and beyond the control of her husband, notwithstanding her coverture," and not taken in execution for his debts, provided the property "remain in the care and management of her husband"; property acquired during coverture by bequest, demise, gift, purchase, or distribution subject to the same rules; no suit by her against her husband for rents or profits, and no charge by him for management; and the husband not liable for her premarital debts, for which her property answers; at p. 580, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/adigeststatutel00florgoog/page/n592/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
36. Bush's Digest (1872), title "The Wife's Separate Property," § 5: "The husband and wife shall join in all sales, transfers, and conveyances of the property of the wife, and the real estate of the wife shall only be conveyed by the joint deed of the husband and wife, duly attested, authenticated and admitted to record."; at p. 580, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/adigeststatutel00florgoog/page/n592/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
37. Fla. Const. of 1868, art. IV, § 26; continued in Fla. Const. of 1885, art. XI, § 1. Digital images of the Constitution of 1868, Florida State University College of Law Research Center (https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/CRC/CRC-1998/conhist/1868con.html : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
38. General Statutes, 1906, § 2462, headed "Married women's acknowledgments," from Laws of Florida, ch. 1835, § 1, and ch. 3011, § 1 (17 February 1877). Digital images of General Statutes of 1906, HathiTrust (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008595800 : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
39. Annotations to General Statutes, 1906, § 2462: that the private examination is indispensable to the validity of a wife's conveyance, Carn v. Haisley, 22 Fla. 317 (1886); that the officer's certificate is conclusive except in case of fraud, Shear v. Robinson, 18 Fla. 379 (1881); and that it may be impeached for fraud on clear proof but not by the wife's testimony alone, the private examination standing in place of the common-law bar of dower by fine and recovery, Hart v. Sanderson's Administrators, 18 Fla. 103 (1881). Digital images of General Statutes of 1906, HathiTrust (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008595800 : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
40. Laws of Florida, 1943, ch. 21746, amending Fla. Stat. § 693.03; confirmed in Scott v. Hotel Martinique, 48 So. 2d 160 (Fla. 1950). Homestead joinder was preserved. Digital images of the current Florida Statutes, The Florida Senate (https://www.flsenate.gov/laws/statutes/2011/2.01 : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
41. Laws of Florida, 1943, ch. 21932, the Married Women's Emancipation Act, now Fla. Stat. § 708.08. Digital images of the current Florida Statutes, The Florida Senate (https://www.flsenate.gov/laws/statutes/2011/2.01 : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
42. Fla. Stat. § 694.04, validating conveyances by married women made before the 1943 act without a separate acknowledgment. Digital images of the current Florida Statutes, The Florida Senate (https://www.flsenate.gov/laws/statutes/2011/2.01 : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
43. General Statutes, 1906, §§ 1955–1956, "Removal of disabilities of married women," from Laws of Florida, ch. 3130, § 1 (11 March 1879); the same provision is in force in McClellan's Digest (1881). Digital images of McClellan's Digest, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Digest_of_the_Laws_of_the_State_of_Flo/9GASAAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
44. Fla. Const. of 1868, art. IX, § 1. Digital images of the Constitution of 1868, Florida State University College of Law Research Center (https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/CRC/CRC-1998/conhist/1868con.html : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
45. Fla. Const. of 1885, art. X; and Thomas v. Craft, 55 Fla. 842, 46 So. 594 (1908). Digital images of the Constitution of 1885, Florida State University College of Law Research Center (https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/CRC/CRC-1998/conhist/1885con.html : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
46. Acts of the Legislative Council (seventh session, 1828), the act regulating conveyances, § 1: an estate of freehold, or a term of more than two years, to be conveyed only "by deed in writing, sealed and delivered in the presence of at least two witnesses"; and § 3 to the same effect for grants and assignments of trust. Carried forward, dated 15 November 1828, as General Statutes, 1906, § 2448, headed "How real estate conveyed," requiring "at least two subscribing witnesses."; at p. 156, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/actsofle1828flor/page/n177/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
47. Acts of the Legislative Council (seventh session, 1828), the act regulating conveyances, the wife relinquishing dower by making herself a party to the conveyance or "by a separate relinquishment under her hand and seal executed in the presence of two witnesses… and in no other way whatever."; at p. 159, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/actsofle1828flor/page/n180/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
48. Leslie A. Thompson, comp., A Manual or Digest of the Statute Law of the State of Florida, of a General and Public Character, in Force at the End of the Second Session of the General Assembly of the State, on the Sixth Day of January, 1847 (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1847), 4th div., tit. IV, ch. 1, sec. 3, which gathers the disabilities of free people of color and sets no limit on what they might own; digital images, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/_mYvAAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
49. Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Florida (third session, 1847–48), ch. 155 [No. 20], "An Act to authorize Judges of Probate of the several counties in this State to appoint Guardians for free negroes," approved 8 January 1848. Section 1 requires "free negroes and free mulattoes, over the age of twelve years… to have a Guardian, who may be selected by the free negro or free mulatto," with a parent choosing for a child under ten, the person chosen to appear before the judge of probate of the county of residence, and the judge, "if he shall be satisfied as to the fitness of such person, to give a certificate under his seal of office," for a fee of three dollars. Section 2 gives the guardian power to sue for money owing to the free negro or mulatto and "the same control over such free negroes, or free mulattoes, as is possessed by guardians in other cases." Digital images, Internet Archive at p. 27; https://archive.org/details/actsofgen47flor/page/n30/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
50. Acts and Resolutions (tenth session, 1860–61), the act on town taxes approved 12 February 1861, § 3: the tax imposed on free negroes and mulattoes to be paid "by the free negro and mulatto, or the guardian of such free negro or mulatto, hereby making them and the guardian liable for the same."; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/actsofgen60flor/page/n144/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
51. Thompson's Digest (1847), 4th div., tit. IV, ch. 1, sec. 3, § 6, the sheriff to offer the services of a convicted free person of color unable to pay the fine and costs "at public outcry," to the person taking him for the shortest period. Digital images of Thompson's Digest, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/_mYvAAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
52. Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Florida, 1865–66, ch. 1,474 [No. 11], "An Act to extend to all the inhabitants of the State the benefits of the Courts of Justice and the processes thereof," passed the House 3 January and the Senate 8 January, approved 11 January 1866, printed at p. 37. Section 1 makes the judicial tribunals and their processes "accessible to all the inhabitants of the State, without distinction of color, for the prosecution and defense of all the rights of person and property, subject only to the restrictions contained in the constitution of the State." Section 2 repeals "all laws heretofore passed with reference to slaves, free negroes and mulattoes, except the act to prevent their migration into the State, and the act prohibiting the sale of fire-arms and ammunition to them," and applies the criminal laws equally to all the inhabitants without distinction of color. digital images, Google Books (https://books.google.com/books?id=kAI4AAAAIAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩ ↩
53. Fla. Const. of 1885, Declaration of Rights, § 18: "Foreigners who are, or who may become bona fide residents of this State, shall enjoy the same rights in respect to the possession, enjoyment and inheritance of property as citizens of the State." Digital images, Florida State University College of Law Research Center (https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/CRC/CRC-1998/conhist/1885con.html : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
54. Fla. Const. of 1885, Declaration of Rights, § 18, as amended by the resolution proposed at the 1925 session and ratified at the general election of 2 November 1926, empowering the Legislature to "limit, regulate and prohibit the ownership, inheritance, disposition, possession and enjoyment of real estate in the State of Florida by foreigners who are not eligible to become citizens of the United States." Digital images, Florida State University College of Law Research Center (https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/CRC/CRC-1998/conhist/1926amen.html : accessed 7 August 2026). Carried into the Constitution of 1968 as art. I, § 2, and repealed by the amendment approved 6 November 2018. No implementing statute was ever enacted. ↩
55. Joseph M. White, comp., A New Collection of Laws, Charters and Local Ordinances of the Governments of Great Britain, France and Spain, Relating to the Concessions of Land in Their Respective Colonies; Together with the Laws of Mexico and Texas on the Same Subject, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, 1839), 1: "Institutes of the Civil Law of Spain", bk. 2, tit. 3, § 3, that a testator with children or grandchildren "must necessarily institute them heirs, and can only dispose in favor of strangers… of the remnant of one-fifth of his property," with the further liberty of bettering (mejorar) one of them "by the addition of the third," and the like protection for ascendants where there are no descendants, at p. 104; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/anewcollectionl01rogoog/page/n132/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
56. Joseph M. White, comp., A New Collection of Laws, Charters and Local Ordinances of the Governments of Great Britain, France and Spain, Relating to the Concessions of Land in Their Respective Colonies; Together with the Laws of Mexico and Texas on the Same Subject, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, 1839), 1: "Institutes of the Civil Law of Spain", bk. 2, tit. 3, that illegitimate children could "inherit from their mother in preference to ascendants" but did not inherit from the father where there were lawful children or ascendants, and that they were legitimated by the subsequent marriage of the parents or by royal authority, at p. 101; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/anewcollectionl01rogoog/page/n129/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
57. Joseph M. White, comp., A New Collection of Laws, Charters and Local Ordinances of the Governments of Great Britain, France and Spain, Relating to the Concessions of Land in Their Respective Colonies; Together with the Laws of Mexico and Texas on the Same Subject, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, 1839), 1: "Institutes of the Civil Law of Spain", bk. 2, tit. 3, § 2, that a child under the power of the father "if a male above fourteen, or if a female, above twelve years of age, may make a testament"; and, at p. 99 (https://archive.org/details/anewcollectionl01rogoog/page/n127/mode/2up), § 3, that those who cannot make a testament cannot witness one, "nor can women," at p. 98; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/anewcollectionl01rogoog/page/n126/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩ ↩
58. Acts of the Legislative Council (1829), the act regulating descents, §§ 1, 10, 12–13, the estate of an intestate to descend in parcenary to male and female, with the right of dower saved and the estate going to the wife or husband in the cases there named; carried forward as Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3618 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2295), as amended by Laws of Florida, 1909, ch. 5911; at p. 79, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/actsoflegis29flor/page/n86/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩ ↩
59. Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3629 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2306, from the Act of 7 November 1828, § 1), giving the widow "one-third part of all the lands, tenements and hereditaments of which her husband died seized and possessed, or had before conveyed whereof she had not relinquished her right of dower," to her use "during the term of her natural life," with her dissent from a will to be signified within one year after probate. That the widow's estate in the land is for life, Woodberry v. Matherson, 19 Fla. 778 (1883). Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
60. Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3630 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2307, from the Act of 7 November 1828, § 2), dower in personal property — one-half where there are no children or but one child, one-third where there is more than one — in fee simple and free of the decedent's debts. Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
61. Acts of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Florida (1838), no. 23, "An Act to amend An Act concerning Dower," passed 6 February and approved 8 February 1838. Section 1 required the widow to elect dower or a child's part within twelve months after probate of the will or the granting of letters of administration, or be confined to her dower; section 2 gave her, on taking dower, "only a life estate in the real property, to return at her death, to the estate of her deceased husband," and, on taking a child's part, "a fee simple estate in the real property, and an absolute title to the personal property including slaves." Digital images, Internet Archive at p. 36; https://archive.org/details/actsoflegis38flor/page/n39/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). Carried forward as Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3632 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2309); and see Benedict v. Wilmarth, 46 Fla. 535, 35 So. 84 (1903), and Harrell v. Harrell, 8 Fla. 46 (1858), printed as the annotation to the 1906 section. ↩
62. Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3631 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2308), the wife taking the whole estate where a man dies intestate without children, subject to her written election of dower within one year recorded with the county judge; from Laws of Florida, ch. 1878, § 1 (27 February 1872), as amended by Laws of Florida, 1919, ch. 7838. Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
63. Revised General Statutes of 1920, §§ 3633–3634 (General Statutes, 1906, §§ 2310–2311); the articles set apart in addition to dower come from Laws of Florida, ch. 1437, § 5 (6 December 1864). Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
64. Laws of Florida, 1933, ch. 16103 (no. 246), the Probate Act, approved 24 May 1933, printed in General Acts and Resolutions Adopted by the Legislature of Florida at Its Twenty-fourth Regular Session, April 4 to and Including June 2, 1933 (Tallahassee: published by authority of law, 1933), part 2. Section 198 repeals Revised General Statutes of 1920, §§ 3592–3615, 3618–3670, 3672–3677, 3679–3692, and 3695–3786, among others, "as of the effective date of this Act, except as to estates of decedents dying prior thereto.". Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
65. Laws of Florida, 1933, ch. 16103, §§ 1–2: the act is cited as The Probate Act and "shall take effect at 12:01 o'clock A. M. Eastern Standard Time, October 1, 1933, and shall govern the estates of decedents dying thereafter; and the estates of decedents dying prior thereto shall be administered in accordance with the statutes and laws of Florida in force prior to the effective date of this Act.". Digital images of Laws of Florida, Florida State University College of Law Research Center (https://law.fsu.edu/research-center/digitized-legal-collections : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
66. Joseph M. White, comp., A New Collection of Laws, Charters and Local Ordinances of the Governments of Great Britain, France and Spain, Relating to the Concessions of Land in Their Respective Colonies; Together with the Laws of Mexico and Texas on the Same Subject, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, 1839), 1: "Institutes of the Civil Law of Spain", bk. 1, tit. 2, §§ 3–4, that a guardian "is only given to the male minor of fourteen years, and female of twelve," and only to a fatherless minor, and that persons under twenty-five could not serve as guardians, at p. 7; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/anewcollectionl01rogoog/page/n35/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
67. Acts of the Legislative Council (1829), the act regulating descents, § 17, a bastard capable of inheriting and of transmitting inheritance on the part of the mother; carried forward as Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3615 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2292). Limited to the mother and not her wider kindred by Keech v. Enriquez, 28 Fla. 597, 10 So. 91 (1891), and Williams v. Kimball, 35 Fla. 49, 16 So. 783 (1895); at p. 79, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/actsoflegis29flor/page/n86/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
68. Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3961 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2602), legitimation by the subsequent marriage of the parents, and the bastardy bond thereby made void. Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
69. Bush's Digest (1872), title "Marriage," § 10, printing the Act of 14 January 1866: "In all cases where colored persons have resided and lived together as husband and wife, and have before the world recognized each other as husband and wife, they shall be deemed and taken to be husband and wife, and are so declared to be by this act, as fully and lawfully as if the marriage had been solemnized by a proper officer legally authorized to do and perform the same; and all children born of such parents are hereby legitimized and made heirs of their parents, and capable of inheriting under the laws of this State, as though he, she, or they had been born in lawful wedlock."; at p. 579, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/adigeststatutel00florgoog/page/n591/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
70. Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3945 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2586), reaching persons of African blood who before 1 January 1866 "cohabited and lived together as husband and wife, and have prior to said date, recognized each other before the world, and were recognized as husband and wife," declaring them to have been lawfully married so long as the relationship existed, and making the children heirs of both parents and of their blood relatives in every line of descent; the chapter printed in the margin of the 1906 section is Laws of Florida, 1899, ch. 4749, § 1. See the companion validation of certain marriages solemnized before 12 January 1866 at § 3944 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2585). Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
71. Adams v. Sneed, 41 Fla. 151, 25 So. 893 (1899); Williams v. Kimball, 35 Fla. 49, 16 So. 783 (1895); and see Johnson v. Wilson, 48 Fla. 76, 37 So. 179 (1904), where a child tracing through such a marriage inherits in the absence of heirs with a better right. Digital images of the Florida Reports, Caselaw Access Project, Harvard Law School Library (https://case.law : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
72. Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3592 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2269), the age to make a will of real and personal property at twenty-one; from the Act of 20 November 1828, § 51. Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
73. Laws of Florida, 1933, ch. 16103, § 5: "Every person, male or female, married or single, who is at least eighteen years of age and who is of sound mind may make a will. No other person may make a will." Subsection (d) saves a will made by a resident before the act if executed according to the law in force when it was made; subsection (e) voids a devise or bequest to a subscribing witness "unless there are at least two other disinterested subscribing witnesses to the will.". Digital images of Laws of Florida, Florida State University College of Law Research Center (https://law.fsu.edu/research-center/digitized-legal-collections : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩ ↩
74. Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3593 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2270), a married woman disposing of her real and personal property by will as if unmarried, though a minor; from Laws of Florida, 1881, ch. 3249, § 1. Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
75. McClellan's Digest (1881), ch. 200, § 1: a will of lands to be signed by the testator, or by another in his presence and at his express direction, "and shall be attested and subscribed, in the presence of the said testator or testatrix, by three or more witnesses, or else it shall be utterly void and of none effect," from § 1 of the Act of 11 February 1832; the three-witness rule also stands in Bush's Digest (1872), title "Wills," § 1. The change is dated by the Florida Supreme Court, which held that the three-witness requirement "remained in force until the adoption of the Revised Statutes of 1892, section 1795 of which reduced the number of witnesses from three or more to two or more," and that the section was then carried into the General Statutes of 1906 as § 2272: Brown v. Avery, 63 Fla. 355, 358 (1912). Digital images of McClellan's Digest, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Digest_of_the_Laws_of_the_State_of_Flo/9GASAAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
76. Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3595 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2272), the will of real estate signed by the testator or another at his direction and in his presence and attested by two or more witnesses in the testator's presence. Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
77. Hays v. Ernest, 32 Fla. 18, 13 So. 451 (1893): a will executed in Florida in 1885, purporting to devise both real and personal estate but signed by only two subscribing witnesses, is valid as to the personalty if valid in other respects, though inoperative as to the realty; the court cites the three-witness rule to McClellan’s Digest (1881), p. 895, § 1. Followed in Brown v. Avery, 63 Fla. at 358. Digital images of the Florida Reports, Caselaw Access Project, Harvard Law School Library (https://case.law : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
78. Fla. Stat. § 731.07 (1949), "Execution of wills": the testator to sign at the end, or another to subscribe his name in his presence and by his direction, and to sign or acknowledge his signature "in the presence of at least two attesting witnesses present at the same time." The printed history reads "§11, ch. 16103, 1933; CGL 1936 Supp. 5477(7); am. §1, ch. 22783, 1945"; digital images, Florida State University College of Law Research Center (https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/FLStatutes/index.html : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
79. Revised General Statutes of 1920, 2: § 3595 and its annotation, that an executor is not an incompetent witness to the will or devise unless he is a legatee or devisee, Meyer v. Fogg, 7 Fla. 292 (1857). Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
80. Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3599 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2276), the nuncupative will valid only where made in the testator's last sickness and proved by the oaths of three witnesses present at the making, who must show that the testator asked them to bear witness; that neither land nor slaves would pass in this State by such a will, McLeod v. Dell, 9 Fla. 451 (1861). Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
81. Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3657 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2334), no person under twenty-one qualified to act as executor, executrix, administrator, or administratrix, and, where a minor is named executor, letters testamentary granted to any other executor named in the will, or, if none other is named, administration with the will annexed granted to the next of kin or another until the minor comes of full age; from the Act of 20 November 1828, § 5. Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
82. Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 3661 (General Statutes, 1906, § 2338), a married woman appointed administratrix only after her husband files his written consent with the county judge. Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
83. Acts of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Florida (seventh session, 1828), "An Act To raise a Revenue for the Territory of Florida," approved 22 November 1828, §§ 1–3, taxing land by the acre at a half, a quarter, and an eighth of a cent by grade; town lots at five cents the hundred dollars of value exclusive of improvements; and merchandise sales, tavern keepers, retailers, billiard tables, and four-wheeled pleasure carriages, with exemptions for religious societies, schools, lands of the United States, and lands whose titles were litigated under the treaty with Spain; at pp. 236–239, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/actsofle1828flor/page/n257/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
84. Acts of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Florida (seventh session, 1828), "An Act To raise a Revenue for the Territory of Florida," approved 22 November 1828, the assessment and collection sections at pp. 237–239, providing for the county court's appointment of an assessor and a collector and fixing the first day of February as the date by which taxable property is reckoned; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/actsofle1828flor/page/n258/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
85. Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Florida (first session, 1845), ch. 10 [No. X], "An Act to raise a Revenue for the State of Florida, and defining the duties of the assessors and collectors thereof," approved 24 July 1845, §§ 2–5: land at three-fourths, a half, and a quarter of a cent the acre by grade; town lots at ten cents the hundred dollars of value, improved lots "including the improvements thereon"; and merchants at twenty cents the hundred dollars of stock in trade. Digital images, Internet Archive at pp. 21–22; https://archive.org/details/actsofge1845flor/page/n54/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
86. For the territorial rates, Acts of the Legislative Council (seventh session, 1828), the revenue act of 22 November 1828, § 3, "every slave over the age of fifteen years and under fifty, the sum of twenty five cents," and "every free man of colour over the age of twenty one years and under the age of sixty years, the sum of fifty cents." For the state rates, Acts and Resolutions (first session, 1845), ch. 10, § 4: "upon every slave, there shall be assessed and collected a tax of thirty-seven and a half cents; and upon every free man of color, over the age of twenty-one years, and under the age of sixty years, there shall be assessed and collected a tax of three dollars." Neither act lays a tax on the head of a white man; at p. 236, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/actsofle1828flor/page/n257/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
87. Fla. Const. of 1865, art. VIII ("Taxation and Revenue"), § 5: "The General Assembly shall have power to authorize the levying of a capitation tax"; digital images, Florida State University College of Law Research Center (https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/CRC/CRC-1998/conhist/1865con.html : accessed 7 August 2026). The corresponding article of the Constitution of 1838, printed in the front matter of the Acts and Resolutions for the first session of 1845, runs to four sections and carries no capitation clause. For what the General Assembly enacted under the new power, see the note following. ↩
88. Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Florida, 1865–66, ch. 1,475 [No. 12], "An Act Concerning Schools for Freedmen," passed the Senate 13 January and the House 15 January, approved by the Governor 16 January 1866; printed at pp. 37–39, the pages carrying the running year 1865. Section 6, side-noted "Tax for Common Schools Fund, &c.": "That a tax shall be assessed and levied upon all male persons of color between the ages of twenty-one years and fifty-five, of one dollar each, the proceeds of which shall constitute a fund, to be denominated the Common School Fund for the education of freedmen, which said tax shall be collected at the same time and in the same manner as the State tax is now collected by law, and paid into the treasury of the State for the use of the Common School Fund for freedmen aforesaid." digital images, Google Books (https://books.google.com/books?id=kAI4AAAAIAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
89. Acts and Resolutions, 1865–66, ch. 1,475, §§ 5, 9, and 11: no teacher entitled to the benefit of the fund without first procuring a certificate of competency from the Superintendent and paying five dollars for it, the certificate authorizing the holder to teach in any school for freedmen for one year and no longer and revocable for incompetency or immorality; a tuition fee collected from each pupil "under such regulations as the Superintendent shall prescribe" and paid into the state treasury as part of the fund; and teaching any school of persons of color without the certificate a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of one hundred to five hundred dollars, or thirty to sixty days' imprisonment. E. B. Duncan, the first Superintendent, reports the fee as first fixed at fifty cents a pupil and then raised to a dollar, with the poor and indigent carried by the tax fund; digital images, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/kAI4AAAAIAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
90. Fla. Const. of 1868, art. XII, § 6: the legislature may provide for levying a special capitation tax, "but the capitation tax shall not exceed one dollar per annum for all purposes, either for State, county or municipal taxes.". Digital images of the Constitution of 1868, Florida State University College of Law Research Center (https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/CRC/CRC-1998/conhist/1868con.html : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
91. Bush's Digest (1872), revenue chapter, § 13: "A poll tax of one dollar shall be levied upon each male person over the age of twenty-one years and under sixty-five, which tax shall be equally divided between the State and county." The upper limit is fifty-five in McClellan's Digest (1881), revenue chapter, § 29, in otherwise identical words; at p. 644, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/adigeststatutel00florgoog/page/n656/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
92. Revised General Statutes of 1920, 1: § 708, headed "Poll tax; duty of collector," printing the parallel General Statutes of 1906 section as § 508 and the marginal citation "Ch. 4322, Acts 1895, Sec. 14; Ch. 5596, Acts 1907, Sec. 11." The section levies one dollar "upon each male person over the age of twenty-one years and under the age of fifty-five years, who has resided in this State more than one year, except such as have lost a limb," to be paid into the county school fund and collected when taxes on property are collected. Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
93. Laws of Florida, 1889, ch. 3850 (no. 4), "An Act to Provide for the Payment of a Capitation or Poll Tax as a Prerequisite for Voting and prescribing the Duties of Tax Collectors and Supervisors of Registration in Relation Thereto," approved 25 May 1889. Section 1 assesses a capitation tax of one dollar annually "against all male citizens of this State of the age of twenty-one years and upwards"; §§ 2–3 require the list and the notation on the registration books, so that "only such persons shall be deemed qualified electors and authorized to vote," saving those not resident in the years in question and those who came of age afterwards; § 4 requires the receipts in book form with duplicates kept, stating the payer's name and the year; § 5 lets a challenged voter produce his receipts. Digital images of Laws of Florida, Florida State University College of Law Research Center (https://law.fsu.edu/research-center/digitized-legal-collections : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩ ↩
94. Fla. Const. of 1885, art. VI, § 8, permitting payment of the poll tax to be made a prerequisite to voting; the requirement in force at the end of this period is General Statutes, 1906, § 170, from Laws of Florida, 1895, ch. 4328, § 1. Enforcement began with the act of 1889, note above. Digital images of General Statutes of 1906, HathiTrust (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008595800 : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
95. Fla. Const. of 1885, art. IX, § 11, added by the amendment proposed as Senate Joint Resolution 135 of 1923 and ratified 4 November 1924: "No tax upon inheritances or upon the income of residents or citizens of this state shall be levied by the State of Florida, or under its authority.". Digital images of the Constitution of 1885, Florida State University College of Law Research Center (https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/CRC/CRC-1998/conhist/1885con.html : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
96. Fla. Const. of 1885, art. IX, § 11, as amended by House Joint Resolution no. 35 of the 1929 session, filed without the Governor’s approval and ratified at the general election of 1930. The amendment left the ban on inheritance and income taxes standing but allowed the Legislature to levy a tax on inheritances or estates "not exceeding in the aggregate the amounts which may by any law of the United States be allowed to be credited against or deducted from any similar tax," and only so long as such a federal tax was enforced; digital images, Florida State University College of Law Research Center (https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/CRC/CRC-1998/conhist/1930amen.html : accessed 7 August 2026). The estate tax was first laid by Laws of Florida, 1931, ch. 15747, § 1, and replaced by 1933, ch. 16015, which governs the estates of decedents dying after 12:01 a.m. eastern standard time on 1 October 1933 — the moment the Probate Act took effect — and leaves earlier estates to the law in force at the death. The chain is printed in the history lines of Fla. Stat. ch. 198 (1949). ↩
97. Laws of Florida, 1949, ch. 26319, § 1, the Florida Revenue Act of 1949; now Fla. Stat. § 212.01. Digital images of the current Florida Statutes, The Florida Senate (https://www.flsenate.gov/laws/statutes/2011/2.01 : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
98. Joseph M. White, comp., A New Collection of Laws, Charters and Local Ordinances of the Governments of Great Britain, France and Spain, Relating to the Concessions of Land in Their Respective Colonies; Together with the Laws of Mexico and Texas on the Same Subject, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, 1839), 1: "Institutes of the Civil Law of Spain", bk. 1, tit. 1, § 2, that "men only, to the exclusion of women, can obtain public employments and offices," with the office of judge given as the example; and bk. 3, on jurisdiction, judges, and trials in Spain, which describes a written procedure before ordinary judges and alcaldes and knows no jury, at p. 3; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/anewcollectionl01rogoog/page/n31/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
99. Acts of the Legislative Council (seventh session, 1828), the act for the summoning of grand and petit jurors, § 8: "the free white male inhabitants of the Territory of Florida above the age of twenty one years and under fifty years shall be liable to serve as petit jurors… but for the trial of all causes affecting title to real estate, the jury shall be composed of free holders only."; at p. 149, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/actsofle1828flor/page/n170/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
100. McClellan's Digest (1881), ch. 127, §§ 2–4: jurors taken from the registered voters of the county, all qualified electors liable to be drawn, and no person who is not a qualified elector permitted to serve; from Fla. Const. of 1868, art. VI, § 12, as amended in 1875, and Laws of Florida, ch. 1628, §§ 1–2 (1 August 1868). Digital images of McClellan's Digest, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Digest_of_the_Laws_of_the_State_of_Flo/9GASAAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
101. Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 2771 (General Statutes, 1906, § 1570), grand and petit jurors taken from the male persons over twenty-one resident in the state one year and the county six months and citizens of Florida, with a person convicted of an infamous crime disqualified unless restored to civil rights; from Laws of Florida, 1893, ch. 4122, § 1, the act printed in the margin of the qualifications section; the act of 1891, ch. 4015, governed the composition of the grand jury and was amended by the act of 1893. Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
102. Annotation to Revised General Statutes of 1920, § 2771, citing State v. Madoil, 12 Fla. 151 (1867). Digital images of Revised General Statutes, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_General_Statutes_of_Florida/1f48AAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
103. Tarrance v. State, 43 Fla. 446, 30 So. 685 (1901); and see Fla. Const. of 1868, extending suffrage and civil rights to men of all races. Digital images of the Constitution of 1868, Florida State University College of Law Research Center (https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/CRC/CRC-1998/conhist/1868con.html : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
104. Hall v. State, 136 Fla. 644, 187 So. 392 (1939). Digital images of the Florida Reports, Caselaw Access Project, Harvard Law School Library (https://case.law : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
105. Laws of Florida, 1949, ch. 25126, amending Fla. Stat. § 40.01 to admit women who register in advance to serve. Digital images of the current Florida Statutes, The Florida Senate (https://www.flsenate.gov/laws/statutes/2011/2.01 : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
106. Acts of the Legislative Council (seventh session, 1828), the act relating to crimes and misdemeanors, §§ 2–3: a person of sound mind is one "who hath arrived to the age of fourteen years, or before that age, if such person know the distinction between good and evil," and no "child under the age of nine years" shall be found capable of guilt of any crime; at p. 48, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/actsofle1828flor/page/n69/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
107. Laws of Florida, ch. 1637 (6 August 1868), the general criminal act, drawn on throughout the crimes chapters of Bush's Digest (1872), McClellan's Digest (1881), and the General Statutes of 1906, none of which carries a general provision on capacity to commit crime. Digital images of McClellan's Digest, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Digest_of_the_Laws_of_the_State_of_Flo/9GASAAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
108. The common-law presumptions follow from the reception act of 1829, note 4 above, where the act and a link to its digitized text are given; for how Florida applied them to a child's capacity see also the territorial crimes act of 1828 at note 106. ↩
109. General Statutes, 1906, § 3222, headed "Capability to be determined by the jury," providing that the common-law rule "that a boy under fourteen years of age is conclusively presumed to be incapable of committing the crime of rape" shall not be in force and that capability shall be determined by the jury; from Laws of Florida, 1901, ch. 4964, § 1. Digital images of General Statutes of 1906, HathiTrust (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008595800 : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
110. Roger J. Waybright, "A Proposed Juvenile Court Act for Florida," 4 Florida Law Review 16 (1951); digital images, University of Florida Levin College of Law Scholarship Repository (https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/flr/vol4/iss1/2/ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
111. Thompson's Digest (1847), 4th div., tit. IV, ch. 1, sec. 3, § 2, from the Act of 21 November 1828, § 16: "Any negro or mulatto, bond or free, shall be a good witness in the pleas of the State for or against negroes or mulattoes, bond or free, or in civil cases where free negroes or mulattoes shall alone be parties, and in no other cases whatever.". Digital images of Thompson's Digest, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/_mYvAAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
112. Thompson's Digest (1847), 4th div., tit. IV, ch. 1, sec. 3, § 3, from the Act of 21 November 1828, § 58, setting out the charge to be read to an enslaved witness; and §§ 4–5, from the same act, § 42, disqualifying anyone having an interest in a slave from sitting on that slave's trial, and requiring the court to assign counsel where the master did not. Digital images of Thompson's Digest, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/_mYvAAAAYAAJ : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
113. Bush's Digest (1872), the Code of Procedure, § 330, "No person offered as a witness shall be excluded by reason of his interest in the event of the action," and § 331, barring examination of an interested party "in regard to any transaction or communication between such witness and a person at the time of such examination deceased, insane, or lunatic"; carried forward as Fla. Stat. § 90.05 (1949), "Witnesses; as affected by interest."; at p. 542, digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/adigeststatutel00florgoog/page/n554/mode/2up : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩
114. Fla. Stat. § 90.04 (1949), headed "Witnesses; competency of wife or husband": "In the trial of civil actions in this state, neither the husband nor the wife shall be excluded as witnesses, where either the said husband or wife is an interested party to the suit pending." The printed history reads "§1, ch. 3124, 1879; §1, ch. 4029, 1891; GS 1502; RGS 2702; CGL 4369"; digital images, Florida State University College of Law Research Center (https://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Collections/FLStatutes/index.html : accessed 7 August 2026). ↩

Note: This law guide was created with assistance from multiple AI tools. Though a diligent effort was made to ensure the accuracy of the information provided, there may be unintentional errors. It's important to check the primary sources as needed to ensure accuracy.