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Genealogical Resources: Sites to See

Roger Hernández's family tree

Lists of immigrant arrivals may be found at Castle Garden, Ellis Island Records and Immigrant Ships.

Find more genealogical resources here

I returned from Maçanet energized to dig for more of my roots, though I knew I would eventually hit the rock of Cuban politics, which would make the research slow. Other than the Surós branch in Spain, almost every family record I am aware of that is crucial to my direct ancestral line lies in almost inaccessible Cuban archives. But not all. When my family came to the United States, they brought with them baptism and marriage certificates—buried in dresser drawers until I sought them out. They are full of genealogical clues.

The baptism record of my grandmother Emelina, Nana’s sister, states her parents were Jaime Surós Isern (born in “Massaná,” a reminder to amateur genealogists to beware of misspellings, since the correct spelling is Massanet) and Eleuteria Reyes Fuentes of Vicana, a hamlet outside Manzanillo. The baptism record also gave the name of the grandparents.

I already had learned, in Maçanet, the names of those on her paternal side, Tomás Surós and Maria Isern, but Emelina’s maternal grandparents were new to me: José María Reyes and Felipa Fuentes. The record included no places of birth or maternal surnames and family oral tradition is silent about both. I knew nothing of them—until years later science and modern technology would pry open a door.

But there are tales about the ancestors of my grandfather Emilio Vázquez Lotti, Emelina’s husband and an upright gentleman of the old school.

There are plenty of photos of his family. One shows Emilio’s mother Lutgarda as a young woman, sweet-faced but wary-eyed, as if readying for anything life could bring. She lived through Cuba’s wars of independence against colonial Spain, in the heart of the province that saw most of the fighting, and she died in 1931 when Cuba was a young republic. My maternal Aunt Rubí remembers her as a “very tall, very fair” woman with a strong personality. In a photo from the 1920s, Lutgarda nuzzles baby Mabel (my mother); the old woman by then had the craggy face of those who’ve seen much life.

My great-grandmother Lutgarda was the daughter of Antonio Lotti Mercader and Josefa Navarrete Cuevas, “Pepilla.” Antonio was a pharmacist in Manzanillo in the mid-19th century, when the town was home to some 4,000 inhabitants. At least, such is the story that reaches me via Eladio Ruiz, a distant cousin descended from Lutgarda’s sister. I never knew Eladio until I started researching my family tree and found that his wife, Sara, had written an informal history.

It says Antonio’s father was an Italian sailor who immigrated in the early 1800s to Manzanillo and established a shipping business, ferrying people and merchandise along the coast. It’s a reminder that Cuba was until the 1950s a place where immigrants headed, not a place people left.

Sara’s research reinforced advice from genealogists: yes, talk to older relatives with long memories, but remember that younger ones may have done family trees whose branches intersect with yours and corroborate family lore. Sara, for instance, said the names Antonio Lotti Mercader and Josefa Navarrete Cuevas had come down through her husband’s branch of the Lottis—the same names handed down, independently, in my branch. It’s as good a confirmation as one can find in the absence of written documents. 

Another suggestion from genealogists applies specifically to Hispanic research: look in Spanish heraldic histories (see box below). These multivolume encyclopedias were intended for persons eager to prove descent from nobility. But the compilations are so exhaustive that even the plebeians amongst us find family links too. Largest is the 88-volume Diccionario heráldico y genealógico de apellidos españoles y americanos, by Alberto and Arturo García Carrafa, with family histories of 15,000 surnames in Latin America and Spain. A specifically Cuban work is the nine-volume Historia de familias cubanas, by Francisco Xavier de Santa Cruz y Mallen, Count of San Juan de Jaruco.

Spanish Heraldic Histories:

Genealogists consider Carrafa and Jaruco, as they call the two works, indispensable. The family accounts themselves are not on the Internet, but the Web does have lists of surnames that the books cover. Carrafa is indexed on the website of the Library of Congress and Jaruco on CubaGenWeb.org. Jaruco can also be found at bookstore chains. I found volume and page number for several family surnames, and spent hours at the New York Public Library poring over the books.

Alas, I did not find I am of noble birth. I found a Navarrete line that went from La Rioja to Santiago de Cuba but I could not make a connection.

I do know that, perhaps in the 1880s as an exhausted Cuba paused between its two wars of independence, Antonio and Pepilla’s daughter Lutgarda married Francisco “Pancho” Vázquez Martí. They became the parents of my grandfather Emilio. 

I have not been able to confirm that Pancho’s parents, Juan Vázquez and Teodora Martí, immigrated from Galicia, in northwestern Spain. But I have seen the 1902 commercial directory of Manzanillo, which shows a Juan Vázquez owned a cantina.

On the same Sariol street, the directory also shows, Bitito Surós owned a bodega. Did my grandparents Emilio and Emelina already know each other in 1902 when he was eight and she four years older? 

It is possible that the utilitarian Manzanillo directory contains a forgotten story of two kids who played together at their families’ businesses, who became a young couple in love, who became my grandparents, and whom I watched hold hands on a bed in New Jersey many years later while cancer ate away Emelina’s life. “To my Emilio, so that he never forgets me,” she wrote in a photo dated 1916, a dark-eyed beauty in back-lit profile. He never did. 

As to my great-grandfather Pancho, his work was listed as “comerciante” on my mother’s baptism certificate (occupations and addresses are another bit of information most genealogical records outside the Spanish-speaking world do not have). Family lore says he owned a mattress factory and a bottling company, and was a photographer. The many photos from that side of the family are evidence of the latter: pictures of young Emilio and twin portraits of a thirtysomething couple that, according to family lore, are his grandparents. Which set of grandparents, though? Since Pancho is said to have been a photographer, they may well be his own parents, Juan and Teodora, rather than his in-laws, Antonio and Pepilla. Educated guesswork is allowed in genealogy; at least, I allow it if I promise myself to keep looking for confirmation.

My favorite photo shows Emilio as a toddler with blond ringlets in the lap of a matriarch holding a fan and wearing quintessentially Spanish widow’s weeds. Again, family lore has it she is one of his grandmothers, but no name. And again, my guesswork: the widow’s prominent eyebrows, intense eyes, and determined jaw make her look very much like the thirtysomething woman of the twin portraits, three decades older.

Still more guesswork? The photo of the couple is from the 1860s. Websites that offer advice on dating photographs for genealogical research (see box on Page 1) say the size of the photo and paper on which it is printed, plus the man’s Lincoln-style top hat and the woman’s “hoop” dress with billowing sleeves, date the pictures to the decade when the United States was in the midst of its civil war, and when Cuba was starting its fight against Spanish colonialism. Some of my relatives fought in that struggle, as I learned on the Internet.

To Be Continued. . .

Roger Hernández reveals his online research tips and delves even deeper into his genealogical search in part 2 of his story.