1855 a United States Land Office Survey in Milton as we now know it lying east of Canal Street to the river up to Berryhill Street was listed under the ownership of Ben Jernigan;
The survey listed some of the property owners within the town as follows: that area of Milton as we now know it lying east of Canal Street to the river up to Berryhill Street was listed under the ownership of Ben Jernigan
; that area north of Berryhill Street from Canal Street to Stewart Street was listed under the ownership of John Hunt; the same corresponding area south of Berryhill Street (that is west of Canal Street) was listed under the ownership of F. (Walker was a member of the first Territorial Senate for which he was treasurer in 1843-44). The land in the general area of what we now call "Allen's Dam" was listed under the ownership of Joseph Keyser who had a sawmill at that site. Adjoining the sawmill property were lands claimed by James R. Riley and Ben Jernigan, and the lands directly south of the sawmill were listed under the names of C. Stokes and A. The lands lying between Milton and Bagdad for the most part were listed in the name of Ben Jernigan, while that same gentleman and Joseph Forsyth were listed as the owners of what we now know as Bagdad (proper). During the Territorial and Early Statehood Periods, industry rather than agriculture provided the economic base for Santa Rosa County. The first known record of the lumber industry in West Florida was of two masts of yellow pine being shipped from Pensacola to Havana by a Spanish schooner in 1743. After the transfer of Florida to the United States in 1821, a number of sawmills began operating around the bays and streams adjacent to Pensacola. Most of them continued operations until the Civil War.
