1825 Tanner Map of Florida

A fine example of H. S. Tanner's monumental 1825 map of Florida. This is one of the earliest obtainable maps of Florida Territory. The map covers peninsular Florida to the St. Mary River which forms the Georgia border and west as far as Jackson County. An inset in the lower left extends the map westward to include Escambia County to the Perdido River. The map identifies European settlements as well as American Indian Villages (appearing as little triangles or teepees). It also features richly detailed topography throughout identifying, roads, hills, swamps, and lakes. Miami, of course, is not present, but the Cape Florida Settlement, roughly in the same location, is identified.

The map identifies a number of layovers from the old Spanish land grant program, including the Fernando da ma Maza Arredondo Grant (Near Vacasansa Bay), Pedro Miranda's Grant (near Tampa), Fernando M. Arredondo Jr.'s Grant (on the Coolasahatchie River), Fleming's Grant (on the San Sebastian River), and Joseph Delespines' Grant (near Titusville and Cape Canaveral). With incredible difficulty and protest, the land grants were dissolved when Florida became part of the United States.

One of the more interesting Grants is the Moses Elias Levy land appearing west of Jacksonville on Alligator Creek. Levy was a Sephardic Jew, Proto-Zionist, Abolitionist, and American Jewish pioneer who emigrated to the United States form Mogador, Morocco. Not a proper grant, in 1819 Levy purchased the land from his friend, the Spanish grantee, Alejandro Ramierz. It consisted of 53,000 acres on which Levy planted to establish a proto-Zionest 'New Jerusalem.' At the time Jews were still active persecuted in Europe, but not in the United States where they could enjoy rights as full citizens. He imagined his settlement, called the Pilgrimage Plantation, as a utopian haven where European could escape anti-Semitism in a Moshav-like social and political setting. Unfortunately lacking the vast capital required to develop the land, the settlement never really took off. By 1828, only 21 Jews settled on Levy’s land and the notion of exclusively Jewish settlement was abandoned. Moreover, since Levy's properties presupposed the United States recognition of Spanish land grants, which it opposed, Levy was financially ruined by a lengthy, and ultimately fruitless, court battle.

Cartographically the map is based upon Charles Vignole's map of 1823. Tanner first published this map in 1823. The present example is the scarce 2nd edition from 1825, in which the map has been updated with the addition of Gadsden County (only St. Johns, Duval, Jackson and Escambia counties are shown in the 1823 edition). This map was published in the 1825 edition of Tanner's iconic New American Atlas.