The East Florida Society of London, 1766-1767

During the great speculation in American lands that preceded the American Revolution, there was more interest in the real estate of East Florida than in the property of any other region of British America. Charles Loch Mowat stated in his seminal study on British East Florida that the Privy Council in London issued orders in council for 2,856,000 acres of land in East Florida in the years from 1764 to 1770, while issuing orders for only 2,108,000 acres in Nova Scotia, New York, Quebec, and West Florida combined. Of the 227 orders for East Florida, 122 were issued in 1767, the peak year of British interest in East Florida real estate. Although Mowat named some of the grantees, he was not able to analyze the forces that lay behind the petitions for those orders in council. Letters recently discovered in the papers of General James Grant at Ballindalloch Castle, Banffshire, Scotland, now permit the historian to present a more complete account