Page 64 - a-history-of-columbia-county-florida-(1996)-edward-f-keuchel

A History of Columbia County Florida (1996) Edward F. Keuchel 53/340

A History of Columbia Comity, Florida

from Cuba to help track the elusive Seminoles into the swamps.
The bloodhounds, dubbed “peace hounds” by Floridians, were not
effective in tracking the Indians and their use was discontinued.51
Macomb’s proposal to give land to armed settlers was incor­
porated into the armed occupation act which was introduced in
Congress in 1840.52 The bill, as introduced in the Senate by Thomas
Hart Benton of Missouri, proposed to grant land to the first 10,000
white settlers able to bear arms. Each settler would receive three
hundred and twenty acres of land to be located in the region east of
the Suwannee River and south to Cape Sable. The bill which
became law on August 4, 1842, was entitled “an act for the armed
occupation and settlement of the unsettled part of the Peninsula of
East Florida.” The act enabled any person who was the head of a
family, or over eighteen years of age and able to bear arms one
hundred and sixty acres of land. To obtain title the claimant had to
obtain a permit from a local land office, reside on the land for a
period of five years, erect a house, and cultivate at least five acres.
Settlement had to take place within one year.53
The law was well received in East Florida. People from the
southern states, especially Georgia, immediately began to settle
the territory, especially the region along the Indian River, St.
Lucia and Lake Worth.54 When the act was passed the Second
Seminole War was at its end, and so the military protection aspect
of its purpose was questionable. More important to Columbia
County, the act was also designed to compensate in land those
members of the Florida militia who had served without pay from
1838 to 1840.55

61 Niles Register, Vol. LVIII, March 28, 1840, p. 51, May 2, 1840, p. 137.
52Daily National Intelligencer, January 9, 1840.
53Niles Register, Vol. LVII, February 8,1840, p. 373, Vol. LXIII, September 10,
1842, pp. 30-31.
MMartin, Florida During the Territorial Days, pp. 94-95.
55Niles Register, Vol. LXIII, Septermber 10, 1842, pp. 30-31.
52

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