Cuban Genealogy Center

Our passengers data base now surpasses 140,000 names!

11 May 2013 - We just completed transcribinig 372 passengers arriving or departing Habana in February 1863.

29 Apr 2013 - Our volunteer transcriber in Spain, Ingrid Palica, transcribed another 1,661 passengers arriving or departing Habana in April 1881. On behalf of our readers, thank you Ingrid!

The above contributions bring the totals in our database to 142,717 passenger names from 8,010 ships.

You can easily consult this free resource by clicking on the top headline (please note that, due to technical reasons, this database cannot be searched by using the Google search engine).

21 May 2012 - Did you know that there was a Cuban on the Titanic? Click on the above headline to reach this story.

5 Feb 2013 - Here are some links that have come to our attention that may be of interest:

• Holguin, Cuba - Blog of Holguin Genealogies (from Paris)
• Matanzas, Cuba (thanks to Alex Hernandez)
• Chinese Presence in Cuba (from Cuban National Library - in English)
• Casino Chung Wah (Chinese Community of Cuba) (the last two links courtesy of Maria Krane)
• Eastman's Online Genealogy Newletter - Always interesting news from Dick Eastman, who moderated the Compuserve Genealogy forum when I started this hobby.
• FamilySearch.org - Free search engine to billions of records. Now includes many records from Spain.

21 May 2012 - One of our readers, Maria Krane, has provided us with a list of chinese laborers who arrived in Habana on board the amercian frigate Francis P. Sage in 19 May 1861. Click on the above headline to reach this document and other facts about the chinese laborers contracted to work in Cuba.

20 March 2011 - We have added several links to lists of the victims of the S.S. Morro Castle disaster that took place on 8 Sep 1934. The main link provides some personal details of the victims. You can reach these links by clicking on the above headline.

Our project to transcribe the 69,770 names of the veterans of the Cuban War of Independence (1895-1898) was completed in 2003. This project, honoring the memory of those who fought to liberate Cuba from the colonial yoke of Spain, was made possible by the effort of 34 volunteers, working for nearly 3 years and provides a unique resource for those researching their Cuban Genealogy (please note that this database canot be searched using the Google search engine).

We have also completed the transcriptions of the death notices of the soldiers that died during that war. These transcriptions provide a unique insight into the personal story of many who fought and died in the war.

The original Roloff book has now been digitaized by the University of Florida Digital Collections and is available here.

The Department of Culture of the Basque Government of Spain has established a Document Center of Euskadi (the Basque nation) called IRARGI which is dedicated to the creation of a historic archive of Euskadi.

The principal components of their digitized archives are:

• BADATOR - an index to the various archives and documents. This includes nearly 40,000 entries representing 5 million information folios compiled from Municipal Archives, private family archives and Catholic Church archives.
• Sacramental Archives of the Historic Diocesan Archives of Bilbao, San Sebastian & Vitoria (containing an index - still in process- to over 5 million baptism, marriage and death documents)
• Index to the 49 volumes of documents compiled by the great genealogist D. Luis de Salazar & Castro (1658-1734)

Click on the headline above to reach this resource.

We have generated a list of links to digitized books of interest to Cuban Genealogy. These books are available on-line for free download. Please continue letting us know of any others that you discover so we can all mutually benefit from these resources.

With permission of the publisher, a Cumulative Index and all 57 issues of the Revista of the Cuban Genealogical Society of Salt Lake City have been digitized and are available here for download. Click on the above headline to reach this resource.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has made available a new version of their Internet search service, Family Search. In this new version, still in the pilot stage, you can not only do the same searches as in the traditional version but, in addition, you can see an image of the original document by clicking on the small image that appears at the upper right. Eventually this service will completely replace the need for consulting microfilms.

We are transcribing passenger names arriving to, and departing from, Habana into a data base. These records can be searched by first and/or second surname, by first name(s), or by ship code. A related ship's database can be searched by ship code, ship name, port of origin, port of destination, or date. Click on the above headline to reach these resources.

Many documents from various Spain Archives have been (and are still being) digitized and placed on the web. The web site interface has recently been updated and is now much easier to use and you no longer have to register. You can search all the archives by any desired text (including personal names), and limit your search to a certain date range. You will then get a listing of all the archives having documents that match your seach criteria. Clicking on the name of an archive will bring up a list of the relevant documents in that archive, Many of these documents will show a small camera icon. Clicking on a camera icon will bring up small images of all the pages of the original document. You can then click on each page, zoom to read it, print it and/or save it to your computer for further study. Visit http://pares.mcu.es/

The following old Cuban Telephone Directories have been digitized and are available on-line:

• 1949 Cuba Telephone Directory (digitized by University of Florida)
• 1958 Habana Telephone Directory (digitized by DonsList.net)

Current telephone listings for Cuba are available via the following links:

• Cuba White Pages
• Cuba Yellow Pages

CubaGenWeb is visited each day by more than 2,400 people from more than 50 countries, including the United States, Mexico, Spain, Argentina, Peru, Cuba, Colombia, Chile, the Dominican Republic and Canada. Find out these and other facts, such as which are our most popular pages by clicking on the above link.

You can easily increase the font size of the text in our pages to improve readability by using the menu on your browser as follows:

• Internet Explorer: select Page->Text Size->Larger (or Largest)
• Firefox: select View->Text Size->Increase (you can repeat this step several times to increase the size further)
• Safari: select View->Make Text Bigger

You can visit our archive pages and review previous news headlines by clicking on the above link.

We are proud that our work has been recognized with the following awards:

• 2009 Cuba Select Honoree - One of the top 24 Cuba web sites in the world - awarded by the Havana Journal, Inc.
• 2006 Genealogy Outstanding Achievement Award - awarded to your Webmaster by the Florida State Genealogical Society.
• 
  
• Selected in 2010 by the US Library of Congress for inclusion in its historic collections of Internet materials (not yet available).