The Patents (Land Grants) 1661-1940
The Patents (Land Grants) provide information on the settlement and distribution of land in Jamaica between 1661 and 1940. These grants were recorded in the Patent Libers which document the names of patentees, acreage received, location of the land and the name of those who owned land contiguous with any land that had been granted under this scheme. All land in colonial Jamaica was vested in the British Crown. To encourage settlement, it was the policy of the Crown to make to prospective settlers, by Letters Patent, land grants which were held on the payment of an annual quit rent.
The Proclamation of December 1662 which ratified previous proclamations regarding settlement and land distribution in Jamaica, stipulated the amount of land granted to each settler. By 1663, the majority of the landholders were independent agricultural workers, with the pattern of land tenure in Jamaica being characterized by the concentration of large landholdings in the hands of a few private entrepreneurs. The small-scale peasant type farming economy shifted to that of a plantation economy based primarily on the cultivation of sugar cane on large estates owned by a few individuals and worked by a mass of slaves. This mode of land tenure dominated the socio-economic and political life of the island through to the 20th century.
Jamaican Patents for the period, 1661-1940, are part of a series of documents from the Island Records Office and are now housed at the Jamaica Archives and Records Department (JARD). All are carefully indexed. For the 17th century alone, there are five thousand records.