Welcome!
The Spanish Louisiana Land Grants Virtual Archive brings together over a thousand documents—grants, surveys, and acts of sale—created by numerous Louisiana surveyors between 1767 and 1840.* Written in Spanish, French, English, or sometimes in a mixture of two or three languages, these archives are evidence of Louisiana’s cultural past. The surveys document each recorded party’s place in society (e.g., widow, free person of color, Native American), illustrate the relationship of the land to adjacent and nearby bodies of water, and often indicate the types of flora found in the vicinity of the measured parcels: with trees of various species serving as boundary markers, it allows for a comparison between the region’s botanical past and present.
A major problem of scholars studying Spanish Louisiana land grants has been that they are not located in one single repository. Instead, they are found across institutions throughout the United States and Europe. The purpose of this project is to unite images of all Spanish Louisiana land surveys in one virtual location and to make them more accessible to scholars of land tenure, social science, genealogy, botany, and even climate change.
*Documents created after the Louisiana Purchase may include official copies of and/or reference to Colonial-era land claims.
About the Spanish land grant system
The land grant system, used not only in Louisiana but throughout the Spanish world, was a means to promote and control settlement and to reward military officers and members of the Spanish government. Spain effectively used land grants in what is now Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. There were two kinds of grants: one given to an individual and another given to a group of settlers. Individual recipients were required to live on and make improvements to the land that was granted to them. In the case of a community land grant, the bulk of the surrounding land was for grazing, timber, and other similar uses. Access to water was a necessity for agriculture. As a result, while land grants often covered large expanses (that of José Narcisco Cabazos in Texas covered 600,000 acres), the majority of grants were long, thin strips of land with a narrow frontage on water.
Acquiring a land grant was not easy, and some groups were not eligible. The Spanish government was hesitant to grant land in the wilderness to merchants and traders. Although exceptions were made, settlement was limited to Catholics, and, according to Royal Orders of 1522, Jews, Muslims, recent converts, and descendants of heretics were unwelcome in the Americas. The policy was in place for nearly three centuries. Furthermore, receiving a grant did not guarantee land ownership. An individual receiving land in a new town was required to reside on it for four years to gain possession. If physical possession of the land was not exercised within three months of the grant, it reverted to the King. Thus, land grants and social history are intimately woven together.
Using the virtual archive
The surveys are searchable by surveyor, person, role, sex, original survey number, state, colonial district, municipality, bounding adjacent street, street address, place name, date, language, and whether a person was a free person of color or a Native American.
We can count about forty surveyors/authors for these documents. Some names appear more often than others, the most frequent being that of Carlos Trudeau, also known as Charles Laveau Trudeau or Carlos Laveau Trudeau (ca. 1750-1816). Whether as the surveyor of record, the copyist, or the compiler, Trudeau played an important role in the creation of these archives.
Names of individuals, boundaries of various Louisiana colonial districts, and early American parishes may appear in different forms and do not necessarily correspond to the current names and divisions. To be consistent with the archives, we have chosen to retain the place names in use when the surveys were created and spelling variations of individual’s names.
Sources:
Additional Resources
De Ville, Winston. Louisiana and Mississippi Lands : a Guide to Spanish Land Grants at the University of Michigan--Properties at Ascension, Attakapas, Baton Rouge ... Ville Platte, La.: Evangeline Genealogical and Historical Society, 1985.
Guide to Louisiana Resources in Spanish Archives/Guia de Fuentes Históricas Españolas Relativas a Luisiana. Exhaustive guide for navigating and researching Louisiana history in numerous Spanish archives: https://www.hnoc.org/sites/default/files/uploads/Guide-to-Louisiana-Sources-in-Spanish-Archives-Guide-English.pdf;
https://www.hnoc.org/sites/default/files/uploads/Guide-to-Louisiana-Resources-in-Spanish-Archvies-Espanol.pdf
The Historic New Orleans Collection: Colonial Louisiana Bibliography Database. An essential guide to available published resources on colonial Louisiana, containing citations of books, book chapters, articles, conference papers, printed documents, facsimile editions of manuscripts, and reprints of earlier publications, regardless of place of publication or language: https://www.hnoc.org/database/colonial/index.php
Holmes, Jack D.L., “The Value of the Arpent in Spanish Louisiana and West Florida,” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, vol. 24, no. 3, 1983, pp. 41-50.
Land Records at The Historic New Orleans Collection: Manuscripts Division Update. Brief scope and content notes for the papers of Carlos Trudeau and other related land tenure holdings at THNOC: https://www.hnoc.org/sites/default/files/file_uploads/Volume%209.pdf
“Pintado Papers,” Louisiana State University/LSU Libraries Special Collections. Land surveys by Vicente Pintado, Carlos Trudeau, et al., the companion collection to the papers of Carlos Trudeau;” 1164 items: https://louisianadigitallibrary.org/islandora/object/lsu-sc-pintado%3Acollection
Portal de Archivos Españoles (PARES), National Archives Department of Spain’s Ministry of Culture and Sport. The main digital platform for disseminating Spain’s historical manuscripts, including maps and surveys related to Louisiana: https://pares.culturaydeporte.gob.es
Smith, Clifford Neal. Spanish And British Land Grants In Mississippi Territory, 1750-1784. Baltimore, MD, USA: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2004.
“Albuquerque Tricentennial.” https://albuqhistsoc.org/SecondSite/pkfiles/pk208landgrants.htm
Lang, Aldon S. and Christopher Long, “Land Grants,” Handbook of Texas. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/land-grants
Knetsch, Joe, “The Impact of Spanish Land Grants on the Development of Florida and the South Eastern United States,” Fédération Internationale des Géomètres/International Federation of Surveyors XXII International Congress; Washington, D.C. USA, April 19-26, 2002
As of March, 2022, the following institutions holding Spanish Louisiana land surveys included in this virtual archive are:
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN - CLEMENTS LIBRARY:
Louisiana Surveys Collection 1781-1803; 105 itemsFinding aid: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/clementsead/umich-wcl-M-4941lou?rgn=Subjects;view=text;q1=louisiana
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION-WILLIAMS RESEARCH CENTER:
Louisiana Land Surveys Collection 1767-1827; 838 items and 4 volumesSpanish Colonial land Grant papers 1767-1834; 21 items
Furcy Verret Papers 1752-1875; 56 items
Bathélémy Lafon Land Tenure Records 1798-1820; 4 items
Antebellum Land Collection 1818-1862; 21 items
Prudhomme Family papers 1795-1930; 1,296 items
Louis Demarest Spanish Land Grant 1786; 1 item
Manchac Land Tenure Records 1794-1822; 5 items
Plano de los Cimentieras, Nuevo, y anciano 1801; 1 item
Francis A. Plough Collection 1790-1854; 54 items and 1 volume
Online catalog:
http://hnoc.minisisinc.com/THNOC/scripts/MWIMAIN.DLL?get&file=[WWW_THNOC]simple_search_all.htm
LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY - HILL MEMORIAL LIBRARY:
Survey collection 1787-1821; 254 items**Full collection contains 400+ items from 1786-1928
Finding aid: https://lsu.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/lsu/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fSD_LSU$002f0$002fSD_LSU:1806955/one
TULANE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES - SPECIAL COLLECTIONS:
Land surveys and applications 1785-1804; 28 itemsFinding aid: https://archives.tulane.edu/repositories/3/resources/672
YALE UNIVERSITY - BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY:
Joseph Valliere Spanish land grant papers 1840-1841; 5 itemsFinding aid: https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/16568571
NEW ORLEANS PUBLIC LIBRARY:
Louisiana Land Records 1793-1820; 8 itemsFinding aid: http://archives.nolalibrary.org/~nopl/mss/mssrecs2.htm