Genealogia Nuestra - Our Caribbean Ancestry: Slave Records from Matanzas Cathedral 1719

October 25, 2017

Slave Records from Matanzas Cathedral 1719 - 1918

In the province of Mantanzas in Cuba, it turns out that there are quite a few Catholic Churches and many records available. The records for this post will concentrate on only the Cathedral but there are other churches I will follow up with. These records were digitized in an effort of saving these endangered records. While these records are digitized, there are limited and more records are being added even to links I provide below.

I will have to edit this post in the future as more records (books) become available and this is actually a very large collection. The period of records from this church start in 1719 and go through 1918. The collection will eventually have 28 books on baptisms, many on death as well as marriages. The records are on those that were enslaved, free, and the hopefully many that escaped the genocide that existed throughout the world against an innocent people.

Whenever you see records marked as Pardos, this translates to a light skinned mulatto. Keep in mind that although many take offense to these terms like I do, I need to call them what they were referred to so that anyone using Google can find the records in the search engine. In addition, the word Moreno means black.

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Anna Bayala

I have been researching my ancestry since the early 1990’s and I’m an avid genealogist. Many ask why I share information freely. Well, I am a firm believer that every person has a right to know and not be blocked from finding out who they are. People who are adopted, an unknown parent, grandparents, not knowing their culture, and the worst, loss of history due to the ugliness of slavery. I share the information in memory of my father, Luis Bayala Delgado, who always advised me that to know your family and history is to know yourself. Our daily evening joke was him asking me, "How many muertitos did you bother today?". Hope these posts will lead you to a successful journey.