Sanford Municipal Court Records

Sanford was founded by Henry Shelton Sanford and incorporated in 1877. Henry Sanford had hoped to make his city the seat of the county, which was Mellonville at the time. In 1883 Mellonville was annexed to the city of Sanford, effectively ending its tenure as county seat. However, this did not result in Sanford becoming the county seat.

Henry Sanford died on May 21, 1891, leaving Gertrude Ellen DuPuy Sanford, his wife, to settle their many debts. Twenty-two years after his death, Henry Sanford's dream came true. On April 25, 1913 Sanford was established as the county seat, the same day Seminole County was established.

Florida had a very extensive and complex court system comprised of no less than sixteen different types of court until 1972, when Article V was revised. With the 1972 revisions, the Office of the State Courts Administrator (OSCA) was created and tasked to create uniformity across the Florida court system, and all courts were broken between the new two-tier system. The new court system, still in use in 2019, consists of County and Circuit Courts. Most courts outside of the two tiers were gone by 1973, and those that remained were definitively gone by 1977.

The Sanford Municipal court was instated in 1923 as a part of the City Charter of the City of Sanford Passed by the Legislature of Florida. In the same document, it orders a docket to be kept to record all proceedings. The dockets in this collection begin their records before 1923, beginning with cases in 1920 and ending with cases from 1972. This Municipal Court was part of Florida's Middle District, which stretches in a diagonal from Nassau to Collier Counties. As a municipal court, the Sanford Municipal court was designated to have power over one city, Sanford. It handled cases of traffic violations, small claims, small conflicts, and the like.

The Sanford Police Dockets within this collection begin thirteen years after the establishment of Sanford as the county seat. A police docket was not required by the City Charter in 1923. These documents were for the police's use as an index of cases. The police dockets cover cases from 1926 to 1946.

The Jail Records likewise act as an index of persons who went to jail. They begin recording in 1924, and those within the collection end recording 1942.

City Charter of the City of Sanford, Florida, Passed by the Legislature of Florida, 1923. 1923. Tallahassee, Fla.: T. J. Appleyard.

Eighteenth Judicial Circuit of Florida. "History of the Eighteenth Circuit: Our Story." Accessed June 19, 2019.

Florida Courts, "History of Court Processes, Programs, and Initiatives." Accessed June 20, 2019.

Florida Courts, "Trial Courts - Circuit" Accessed June 4, 2019.

Office of the State Courts Administrator, Florida. "Short History of the Florida State Courts System Processes, Programs, and Initiatives." 2016. PDF.

Robinson, Jim, and Mark Andrews. Flashbacks: The Story of Central Florida's Past. Orlando, Florida: The Orange County Historical Society and the Orlando Sentinel, 1995.

Sanford Museum. "Gen Henry Shelton Sanford." Accessed June 19, 2019.

The City of Sanford. "History and Historic Preservation." Accessed June 19, 2019.

Whitner, J. N. The Tale of a Mosquito: A Story of Early Sanford, Florida. The Sanford Historical Society Inc., 2000.