St. Leo, Florida
town in Pasco County, Florida, United States
St. Leo or Saint Leo is a town in Pasco County, Florida, United States. The town is a suburb included in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is more commonly known as the Tampa Bay area. It is best known as the home of Saint Leo University, Holy Name Monastery and Saint Leo Abbey. The population was 2,362 at the 2020 census.
History
In 1889, the Benedictines established the Holy Name Monastery, Saint Leo Abbey, and St. Leo College on Judge Edmund F. Dunne's former homestead and farmland east of San Antonio, Florida on the shores of Lake Jovita, later incorporating the area as part of a new town called St. Leo.
Dunne was a legal counsel involved in the Disston Land Purchase of 1881, and as his commission, received 100,000 choice acres (400 km2) of land out of the 4,000,000 acre (16,000 km2) purchase.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “St. Leo, Florida” is town in Pasco County, Florida, United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Florida, town and Pasco, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “town in Pasco County, Florida, United States” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q892570. VIAF identifies the subject as 127300230. The Library of Congress control number is n81134052. Authority coordinates are 28.338, -82.253. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020, 1889 and 1881.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “St. Leo, Florida”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow St. Leo, Florida primary sources, St. Leo, Florida archive and Florida research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “St. Leo, Florida”?
- Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “St. Leo, Florida” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.