Cuban Digitized Church Records and 1919 Census

While Cuba goes through their changes, including the ability to freely travel to the island, one of the struggles for many is finding resources when researching Cuban ancestry.

Fortunately, the internet has made it possible for many to locate many genealogical records on their ancestors via online databases.While it is easy to find records for Puerto Rico since it is a part of the United States, 50 years of closing our borders has impacted many of our distance cousins that live on this island.

So today, I will share what can be found.  Unknown to many, Vanderbilt University maintains a collection of church records which are available to view online. The university offers degrees in Latin Studies and maintains many maps, manuscripts, and books on Cuba and other Latin countries.  Vanderbilt's church collection for Cuba contains records from the 1500's to the 1800's for the following churches.  After clicking on the links below, simply scroll down to arrive to the church books.  If you are of African descent, you will be surprised to discover your ancestors are also in the books, include ancestors that were enslaved.  The first church is in Matanzas and the remaining are all in Havana (scroll down the page until you arrive to your church):

• San Carlos de Matanzas (13,658 images)
• Santo Cristo del Buen Viaje (5,363 images)
• Iglesia de Jesús, María y José (4,959 images)
• Nuestra Señora de Regla (2,664 images)
• Espiritu Santo (1873 images)
• Sagrado Catedral de San Cristóbal de La Habana (1,338 images)
• Santo Angél Custodio (4,769 images)
• Arzobispado de La Habana (1077 images)
• Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Guanabacoa (7,532 images)

Some of the books have been transcribed.  You can find them by clicking here.

Vanderbilt University contains some collections that will assist you in your genealogical research.  The following collections are military records which include "pardos" meaning brown complexion. The collections will each open in a new window:

• Libro de Servcios de Blancos agregado al Batallon de Voluntarios Pardos libres de Cuba y Bayamo, 1789-1790
• Libro de Servicios de Batallón de Pardos de Milicias de Infanteria de Cuba y Bayamo, 1795-1796
• Libro de Servicios de la Plana Mayor de Blancos al Batallón de Pardos Libres de Milicias de Infanteria de Cuba y Bayamo, 1793-1794
• Libro de Servicios de los oficiales, sargentos primeros, y demas individuos de la plana mayor de Blancos del Batallón de Pardos de Cuba y Bayamo, 1797
• Libro de Servicios de los oficiales de la Plana Mayor de Blancas de Batallón de Pardos de Infanteria de Cuba y Bayamo, 1799    

1919 Census

Vanderbilt has a digitized copy of the 1919 Census for Cuba (click on it to open in a new browser).  This book contains many names and is in a book format.  You will find a detailed list of people who were census personnel and enumerators for districts.  You will have to page through to get through the book to get to the names.  Hopefully you can spend time reading it to understand how people lived during that era.  The book also contains some images from around Cuba.

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Understanding Your X Chromosome DNA

When it comes to DNA, I am either asked privately or see posts asking why Ancestry shows an individual further related than what the person appears on GEDMatch. This has to do with how Ancestry's Timber software analyzes the DNA file.  Timber has been known to remove centimorgans (cM) where chromosomes are bunched together (clustered) which can lead to removing relatives from your list.

I have seen this occur with people who are distant related but I have documentation that they are indeed related via records. This phenomenon isn't just my tree but many other people complaining about the same issue.

The best option is to download your raw file from Ancestry and upload it to GEDMatch to further analyze your DNA.  While learning to use GEDMatch may seem hard at first, it actually isn't. If you need help, there are many groups on Facebook, many blogs that will help you along the way, and plenty of YouTube videos.

There are also wiki pages associated to each of the options selected on their website.  Just remember that this website is free and ran by many volunteers.  There are additional tools available that you can use at the cost of  $10 per monthly.  However, learn more about the website before taking on too much.

Getting to what I want to discuss, X Chromosome, note that you should not be relying solely on X to identify relationship once you are in GEDMatch.  The individual should be matching you on other chromosomes. 

Lately I am seeing posts of "I have an X match", does that mean we match via a particular parent? The answer is yes and no.  It all depends if you are male or female. Below is an illustration of how we inherit X as a male and hope with the visual it will clarify the answer to the question.

Note, we are not discussing mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in this post; that is another discussion. This is to keep the discussion as simple as possible and the illustrations have been over simplified to help you along.

Males have a Y chromosome and a X chromosome.  Males can only inherit Y chromosome from their father and a combination X chromosome from their mother.

Females have two X chromosomes. Females inherit an exact copy of their father's mother's (paternal grandmother) combination X chromosome and a combination X chromosome from their mother. 

Combination X from your mother mean that you do not get an exact copy of one of her X chromosomes, it is just as random of inheritance as it is for your other 22 chromosomes (called autosomes).

So for example, I have two half sisters, we share the same mother.  Our shared amount of X chromosome DNA is different from one another. With one sister I share 94 cM and the other I share 64 cM. However, they are two full sisters, so they share an exact copy of their father's DNA and a portion of our mothers, between them they share 196 cM.

Below is an illustration of what I stated before, note that you can inherit many combinations from a mother but I left this very simple; you can click on the image to blow it up from a computer.

Males can inherit many different combinations from their mother and pass an exact copy down to only their daughters.  So every female is walking around with an exact copy of their father's mother's combined X DNA.

Most importantly, you should not assume if a person only matches you on X and not on any other chromosome, that you are related.  It is not a reliable way of determining relationship.  I hope this clarifies many questions on X. 

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