Data Base of Prisoners and Deportees During the Ten Years War (1868-1878)

Introduction

This data base represents a compilation of records that exist about prisoners and deportess during the Cuban Ten Years War ("The Great War") against Spain, arranged in a manner that facilitates searching by their surnames.

The data base currently only includes prisoners deported during the first two years of the war (1868-1870). A major portion of the data base is a list of the first prisoners deported to the island of Fernando Poo, in the Gulf of Guinea, off the West coast of Africa in March 1869. The original list was kindly provided to us by Humberto Estrada del Sol (see Reference 1 below). These individuals were deported by order of General Dulce acused of fighting or conspiring against Spain.

We have now been able to correct and expand the original Fernando Poo list with the information contained in Reference 2. We have also added the names of individuals sent to other Spanish prisons listed in Reference 2. We have not included the names of families expelled from their places of residence but not imprisoned.

References

1. La Revolucion (newspaper), May 1869, New York - data extracted and provided by Humberto Estrada del Sol.
2. Book of Blood - An Authentic Record of the Policy Adopted by Modern Spain to Put an End to the War of Independence of Cuba (October 1868 to December 1870), Jose Ignacio Rodriguez, 1871, M.M Zazamendi, Translator and Printer, 40 & 42 Broadway, New York. Available for free download for personal, non-commercial use from http://books.google.com.

Because of the paucity of existing records from the Cuban "Great War", we invite our readers to contribute any other names that they know, through family or other records, of individuals who were prisoners or deportees during any of the Cuban struggles against Spain that so we can preserve their memory by adding them to the data base. Please be sure to supply all relevant information.

Census of Deaths in Ceuta

Emilio Barranco, resident of Ceuta, has made a notable compilation of the records of Cubans who died while they were interned in the penal colony of Ceuta during the Cuban wars of liberation. He has made this detailed census available, acompanied by more than 300 photographs of the original inscriptions of these deaths in the records of the church of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios in Ceuta.

• Census of Deaths in Ceuta

Search Form

To view the data base of prisoners please first read the instructions below and then go to the Search Form by clicking on the following button:

Notes

Note 1 - Where "note 1" appears in the place and date of death, the individual, according to Reference 2, died on the ship or in the hospital after landing on account of bad treatment, exposure, bad ailments and want of medicines.

Note 2 - Dates appear in the form YYYY-MM-DD (where YYYY = year, MM = month and DD = day) to facilitate sorting the records chronologically.

Note 3 - As in all of our databases, all accents and umlauts have been removed to facilitate sorting. Surnames such as "de la Torre" or "del Sol" appear as "Torre (de la)" and "Sol (del)" again to facilitate searching and sorting.

Note 4 - We have tried our best to merge the information from References 1 and 2. Where there were differences in names or spelling we used Reference 2 as the primary reference and placed the alternate form shown in Reference 1 in square brackets [].

Note 5 - The steamship Francisco de Borja, transporting over 250 prisoners to Fernando Poo, departed Cuba on 21 Mar 1869 and arrived in Africa on 21 May 1869, with the prisoners disembarking during the next several days. In the data base we have used the departure date.

Note 6 - As a mater of interest, here are the professions of 250 of the prisoners transported to Fernando Poo according to Reference 2:

Abbreviations

Abbreviations used in the data base:

Instructions for using the search form:

To facilitate printing of the results we have separated the search form from the instructions. Please read the following instructions before you attempt to use the form. You can then proceed to the Search Form.

NOTE: To see the data base, it is necessary that you activate JAVA in your browser

1. Wait until names appear on the grid - this can take a few seconds.

2. The names will appear in alphabetical order of "1st Surname".

3. All accents have been removed to facilitate searching.

4. Use the scroll bar on the right to scroll up or down through the list.

5. Click the "Page Up" or "Page Down" buttons to see the previous or next page of the list.

6. Click any of the buttons at the head of each column to sort the information by the contents of that column. Clicking again will reverse the order of the sort.

7. To search for a particular surname:

   • Write the first letters or complete last name in the box above the column titled "1st Surname" or "2nd Surname" (to search by maternal surname). You can use the standard wildcards "?" (meaning any letter) and "*" (meaning any sequence of letters). Put the initial letter in caps. Do not use accents, but do use the letter "ñ" if applicable.

   • Click on the "Search" button. (the box at the extreme upper left of the grid). The box directly under this button will tell you the number of entries found by your search criteria.

   • You can also search for the maternal surname in the column "2nd Surname". You can also search the contents of any of the other columns.

   • Click the "Clear Form" button to clear the grid in preparation for a new search (this does not erase the database, only clears the form).

   • Click the "List All" button to see all the entries in the file.

8. When you find the name you are looking for, click the button marked "Details" at the extreme left of the line where the name appears. This will take you to a page showing alll the details on that individual present in the data base. See the Notes section above for the meaning of the abbreviations used in the data base. To return to the original page, click the button marked "Search".

9. If you want to print the data, we recommend you use the "landscape" mode.

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