In 1733, the Danish West India–Guinea Company reached an agreement with the French government to acquire the nearly uninhabited island of St. Croix for 750,000 livres. The purchase agreement was signed in Paris on Wednesday, May 13th, 1733, and the final contract was executed in Copenhagen a month later on Monday, June 15th, 1733.
Frederik Christian Hals von Moth, who had served as Governor of St. Thomas and St. John until May 1727, played a crucial role in advocating for the purchase of St. Croix. He was appointed as the first Governor of the Danish West India–Guinea Company on November 12th, 1733. Governance orders for St. Croix were issued on November 16th, 1733.
Moth, accompanied by a surveyor/engineer, initially landed in the west end near La Grange before sailing to Bassin. Despite the treacherous reefs surrounding the harbor area, Moth saw the location’s potential and decided to establish Christiansted in the Bassin area. He envisioned Christiansted to resemble Christiania (now Oslo) in Norway, with boulevards, promenades, and elegant buildings.
The Danish West India and Guinea Company was a privately chartered joint-stock company with significant royal and personal interests. The purchase of St. Croix required dividing the island into 300 lots of equal size and quality, each measuring 3,000 Danish feet by 2,000 Danish feet. Surveyors Johann Cronenberg and Johann von Jaegersberg were commissioned to create the Cronenberg map, building upon existing geographical knowledge from the Du Tertre Map of 1671.
By the time the Cronenberg map was completed, many estates were already operational, and Moth was credited with organizing the island and laying out the towns of Christiansted and Frederiksted. A later map created by Jens Michelsen Beck in 1754 depicted the nine quarters and two districts of Christiansted and Frederiksted.
The divisions between quarters were not oriented to true or magnetic north but at an approximate angle of -17° to true north. To establish the squaring of the island, a reference line known today as Centerline Road (Queen Mary’s Highway) was created. The Cronenberg map was not published until 1750, followed by the Beck map in 1754.
However, at least 22 estates were already operational by the time of the Beck map’s publication. Daniel Hopkins speculated that lots were assigned without a formal survey, leading to legal disputes regarding land boundaries.
The two districts of Christiansted and Frederiksted originated as deep-water ports and were organized during French possession from 1650 to 1695. The major estates created during this period still bear French names, such as La Grande Princesse (Company quarter) and La Grange (West End quarter).
Initially, estates were distributed to company shareholders through a lottery system and later sold to various entities with encouragement from the Company. Tax records were established in 1803, recording the names of estate owners. Over time, estates underwent division, merger, renaming, and other changes.